Unpacking Battery swapping startup Battery Smart’s FY22 numbers

Electric vehicle services have seen a significant rise in the country in recent years thanks to government’s initiatives towards EVs and availability of charging infrastructure along with battery swapping. Three year old  EV battery swapping solution provider Battery Smart finally hit its straps in the last financial year.

Battery Smart’s revenue from operations skyrocketed 44X to Rs 7.95 crore during the fiscal year ending March 2022 from Rs 18 lakh in FY21, as per the consolidated annual financial statement with the Registrar of Companies.

It collected around 67% of revenue from operations from battery swapping services while the rest came from all onboarding activities including retrofitment, station setup, training activities and network sign up.

Battery Smart is a battery-swapping startup that provides advanced lithium-ion batteries for electric two and three-wheelers where it claims that batteries are swapped with fully charged ones in just two minutes at any of its swapping stations. Battery Smart claims to have completed over 8.5 million battery swaps, set up over 500 live swap stations, and has more than 17K customers across 15 cities.

Lease rentals of batteries accounted as the largest cost and jumped multifold to Rs 4.85 crore during the year from Rs 15 lakh in FY21. Backing it is digital platform for facilitating new-age investments, Grip Invest that signed a $2 million lease financing deal with Battery Smart to lease 4,000 batteries for e-rickshaws.

To accelerate growth the company hired more people, taking its employee benefit expenses on a 9X jump to Rs 4.38 crore in FY22 while station support costs rose to Rs 3.6 crore.

Further, it also incurred costs related to consumption of stores and spares and ground management charges of Rs 1.43 crore and Rs 1.4 crore during the same period. In total, its expenses blew up 18X to Rs 21.46 crore in FY22 as compared to Rs 1.18 crore in FY21.

Following the rising costs, losses of Battery Smart also soared 23X to Rs 13.08 crore in FY22 against Rs 57 lakh in FY21. On a unit level, Battery Smart spent Rs 2.7 to earn a rupee of operating revenue in FY22.

The battery-as-a-service solution provider, Battery Smart has raised around $44 million including $14 million debt across two rounds. Its current valuation stands around $126 million (Rs 970 crore) and is backed by Tiger Global, Blume Ventures, Orios Ventures, GFC and more.

With operations finally taking off, Battery smart will be hoping for a period of strong, sustained growth ahead, as the EVs proliferate in its preferred categories, across both B2B and B2C segments. As a ‘purpose’ driven firm, it has taken on the task of establishing a large network of swapping stations that will support EVs across the two wheeler and three wheeler category. With a claimed 8 million swaps and over 500 stations,  the firm has already collected critical data on the challenges and evolving markets in key Indian cities it is present in.  With a significant war chest and an expanding market, that makes it a key firm to track in terms of the health of the EV sector in India.