Vidyut Launches EV Reselling Platform To Become A Full Stack EV Player

Commercial electric vehicle (EV) financing startup Vidyut, which counts Zephyr Peacock, Saison Capital, Force Ventures and Alteria Capital among its investors, has rolled out an offline platform for sales and financing of pre-owned EVs.

However, the company’s foray into the reselling of EVs is currently limited to three wheeler commercial electric vehicles from Mahindra, Piaggio, Euler Motors, Greaves, Murugappa Group’s Montra Electric and Altigreen. 

Initially available in cities like Delhi NCR, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, Vidyut plans to expand its offline services to Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Lucknow, Agra and Kanpur by FY25. 

Besides, it also aims for an online marketplace in the next six months to facilitate purchase of used commercial EVs. 

Giving its rationale behind the portfolio enhancement, the startup said in a statement that the platform will aid it to become a full-stack EV ecosystem startup. It added that the lack of accessibility to the resale market and resale price discovery of EVs has been one of the biggest hurdles in EV adoption in the country. 

The startup’s CEO Xitij Kothi asserts that the resale platform helps in “3-4X better” realisation of EV resale prices when compared with traditional second hand dealers in the market. 

“Absence of a robust resale market is one of the biggest roadblocks in the acceleration of EV adoption. With the launch of our EV resale platform, we will bring trust and transparency in the pre-owned EV market by focusing on accurate and transparent vehicle and battery valuation,” Kothi said. 

The portfolio enhancement comes a few months after the startup bagged $10 Mn in its Series A funding round led by 3one4 Capital. Back then, it said that the proceeds would be deployed l in expanding its business from EV insurance, vehicle lifecycle management to EV resale.

Founded in 2021 by Kothi and Gaurav Srivastava, Vidyut so far provided EV financing for commercial EVs with two ownership plans: a hybrid financing model for vehicle loans with a battery subscription, which, it claimed, brought down the upfront EV cost by 40-50%. The other one was a traditional term loan plan.

The startup’s plans to enter the EV resales market comes at a time when sales of new EVs is on the decline in India. On July 10, union minister Piyush Goyal reportedly expressed concerns over the declining sales number in the first quarter of the fiscal year, adding that there’s a need to deepen the push to increase EV adoption in the country. 

Three months after the Centre introduced an Electric Mobility Promotion Scheme (EMPS) 2024 to promote EV sales, the scheme reportedly managed to achieve only 3.6% of its targeted vehicle sales to date.