The nascent Indian electric vehicle market is now seeing the entry of global majors in the field, particularly when it comes to EV batteries. The latest is French-headquartered Forsee Power, a leading global supplier of smart battery management systems, which recently announced plans to manufacturing EV battery systems in Pune.

In a recent exclusive interaction with Autocar Professional, Christophe Gurtner, founder, chairman and CEO, Forsee Power said that the company has had India on its radar for some time now. It has shortlisted a local partner in Pune, along with whom it will initially manufacture smart battery systems for electric two- and three-wheelers, and subsequently for commercial vehicle applications.

Foresee Power has plenty of capacity. According to Gurtner: “We have established production capacity worldwide which includes installed and operational capacity of more than 1 gigawatt and scalable up to 4 gigawatt. The company that we have partnered with in India is setting up the production in Pune and will have around 70 megawatt of production capacity installed in the coming weeks under Phase 1. Of course, this is just step one. This is just the base and we want to scale up. We are a technological company and are not afraid to build up our capacity step by step and grow our market share.”

Forsee Power has appointed Durga Akhnoor to manage the company’s presence in India and he will be responsible for overall sales, manufacturing of battery systems out of the company’s factory in Pune as well as integration at the customers’ and after-sales services.

Interestingly, what gives the company a head-start is that the fact that it counts the likes of Piaggio and Bosch, who have serious presence in India, among its global customers.

In terms of investment, Forsee Power’s “initial investment that has been agreed for phase 1 is around 10 million euros (approximately Rs 82 crore). Then, depending on how things go, we will invest more. The plan is not to limit and define the amount of investment. The point is to validate the plan and succeed. If we succeed, we go to the next stage. Phase 1 will last two to three years. But again in six months or nine months, depending upon what the situation is, we will consider the next step,” revealed Gurtner. 

Full report in Autocar Professional’s January 1, 2021 issue