Magenta Mobility Raises $22 Million From bp, Morgan Stanley India Infrastructure

Electric mobility solutions provider Magenta on Wednesday said it has closed a Series A1 funding round with $22 million equity investment from the UK-headquartered bp and Morgan Stanley India Infrastructure-managed investment fund. The company plans to deploy the freshly raised capital in fleet and geographical expansion besides investing a part of the funds in technology-build as it focuses on “sustainable and profitable” growth, Maxson Lewis, Founder and Managing Director, Magenta Mobility said.

Besides, as part of this investment, bp's joint venture with Reliance--Jio-bp-- will be the exclusive EV charging partner for Magenta Mobility's fleet, he said. Seed-funded by HPCL, the Pune-based company has 750 electric vehicles operating in the last-mile delivery space across seven cities- Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Gurugram, Mysuru and Noida - catering to some of the leading e-commerce, food and online delivery players in the country. It also operates 35 charging and parking hubs in these cities.

“We have closed a Series A1 funding round, raising $22-million (about Rs 180 crore)  with two market key investors-- bp of UK and investment fund managed by Morgan Stanley India Infrastructure. These are the two key investors now on board with us,” Lewis told PTI. “It is not a pure investment, it is a strategic investment,” he added. The fresh capital infusion takes the total fund raised by the company to Rs 275 crore, with as much as Rs 95 crore mopped up in various rounds earlier including from Indian-American philanthropist and serial entrepreneur Kiran Patel.

bp and Magenta Mobility will also collaborate on electric fleet management software, a statement said. With more than 100 million online shoppers, and the government's target of electrification of e-commerce delivery and logistics by 2030, India is a key market for bp's global electrification business, bp pulse, Magenta said. “This investment ...is a significant milestone for the company as we look to build on our strong foundations in the EV space over the last four years. This investment and backing will catapult us in scaling our tech-led electric mobility platform across the country,” Lewis stated.

He said that the company will be adding another 150 electric vehicles in the last-mile delivery space in next few days while the plan is eventually to have a strong 4,000 vehicle fleet comprising both three and four-wheelers in the next one year. The capital will support the market expansion into eight additional cities, he said and added that the company has plans to expand geographical reach on a quarter-by-quarter basis.

Magenta said it is working on an ecosystem approach to provide solutions to all the participants – customers, driver partners, OEMs and financiers. Lewis said Magenta had aimed at growing 5X and it is pretty much there, adding that, the company focuses on sustainable growth, profitable growth.

Decarbonising the last-mile delivery is increasingly important in India as the e-commerce market is expected to grow fourfold by 2030, which will require the deployment of huge numbers of new vehicles this decade, said Sashi Mukundan, President, bp India and senior vice president, bp. “This is bp's first venture-led entry into India's last-mile delivery market and our second in India's mobility sector. We see this investment as an opportunity to further advance decarbonizing mobility solutions,” he said.

According to him, with India setting an ambitious 2030 target for the complete transition to EVs for e- commerce, delivery, and transport logistics service providers, Magenta through its operations will help decarbonise Indian cities whilst helping meet demand in the fast-growing e-commerce delivery industry. bp, according to the statement, is investing heavily in five transition growth engines that will help it deliver its net zero plans, including bp pulse electric vehicle infrastructure, which is already live in nine countries worldwide.

“Being one of the early entrants in the charging infrastructure space, the company (Magenta)  is uniquely positioned to stitch an end-to-end solution to enable businesses to go electric in their middle and last mile operations. “In terms of market opportunity, there are strong tailwinds supporting EV adoption by large customers in their supply chain both for economic and sustainability reasons,” said Shyamsundar Gurumoorthy, Managing Director and Co-Head of Morgan Stanley India Infrastructure.