BatteryPool: A Pune startup powering last-mile deliveries
BatteryPool, which has 55 smart battery-swapping stations in Pune and Delhi NCR, has raised an undisclosed amount of growth capital as part of its seed funding round.
What can delivery partners do when their electric vehicles (EVs) are about to run out of charge and they are short on time? A Pune-based startup has a solution: swap the battery for a charged one at one of the many stations operated by it in Pune and Delhi.
The smart battery-swapping station is BatteryPool’s flagship product and is present in 55 locations — five in Pune and 50 in Delhi. “When we started the company, we bought a fleet of 20 electric two-wheelers and gave these to small business and delivery boys who use EVs for commercial purposes. For the first time, we got an insight into issues around charging and daily maintenance. A delivery boy might travel 90-100 km in the city but the vehicle does not have the range to cover the distance on a single charge. The driver might not find a charging point in public and, even if he did, the battery might take up to three hours to charge. That downtime lost revenue for the driver,” says Ashwin Shankar, an electrical engineer who founded BatteryPool in 2018.
At BatteryPool’s battery-swapping stations, set up at a couple of BigBasket hubs in Pune, “a driver can come and change the battery packs in 30 seconds”.