EV motorcycle startup Raptee has opened its first factory for manufacturing EV motorcycles in Chennai, which will be rolled out later this year. Raptee plans to invest Rs 85 crore in the plant, which will have an annual capacity of 1 lakh units. This factory will serve as the primary production plant for Raptee for the next 24 months.
The company plans to employ 470 people for manufacturing and further design innovation for the motorcycles. The R&D Centre will have development and testing facilities on site, and the manufacturing plant will also house a dedicated battery pack assembly line, the press release noted.
Calling this a huge leap forward for the company, Co-founder and CEO Dinesh Arjun said, “We are at an inflection point where we move from a small R&D outfit to becoming a full blown OEM and we’ve identified the perfect property to maintain the balance for the years to come.” He further added that they were very particular about having the R&D and manufacturing teams in the same campus, to improve collaborations in ‘this extremely crucial period for the company.’ The centrally located property was inaugurated by Shaji Koshy, Former Senior Vice President at Royal Enfield and an advisor to Raptee.
Jayapradeep Vasudevan, Chief Business Officer, Raptee said, “This facility is big enough to cater to the growing size of our team for the next two years. From a manufacturing capacity standpoint, it also gives us enough flexibility to meet the customer demand from the time of launch.”
Early this year Raptee received a grant of Rs 3.27 crore from the Automotive Research Association of India, an R&D organisation set up by the automotive industry and the Government of India. The grant was given under AMTIF's (Advance Mobility Transformation and Innovation Foundation) Industry Accelerator program as a part of the Capital Goods Scheme by the Ministry of Heavy Industries, Government of India.