River Mobility plans to expand operations
Bengaluru Bengaluru: Bengaluru-headquartered electric vehicle startup River Mobility Pvt Ltd, backed by big investors such as Yamaha Motor Corp, Mitsui & Co Ltd, aims to open 100 showrooms by March 2026, a top official said. The company opened its first store in Chennai as part of its expansion drive and plans to open 15 more stores by November and 50 by March 2025, co-founder Arvind Mani, chief executive officer, said here. “We are very excited about the Chennai store. We have a lot of people from Tamil Nadu working in our facility (located outside Bengaluru). Chennai is a big EV market. The first store in Chennai is also a company-owned and operated store,” Mani told PTI. Elaborating on the expansion plans, he said the company will open more retail showrooms in Chennai in the next one year and the second store in Tamil Nadu will come up in Coimbatore. “It is getting ready and there will be at least four stores in Chennai in the next one year,” he added. Giving details about the company, which started operations in March 2021, Mani said his company started selling the “Indy” range of scooters from October 2023 and has sold around 1,500 units so far. “Last month we sold around 400 vehicles,” he added. “We have around 750 employees. We have raised around Rs 550 crore so far and most of the investors are international and the most prominent name is Yamaha (from Japan), which led the last round of fund raising. We also have investments from Toyota Ventures, Mitsui.”
The company has a research and development facility in White Field, Bengaluru and around 400 engineers work at the company’s assembly factory in Hosekote, located on the outskirts of Bengaluru. Responding to a query, he said the company has a total of three stores, two in Bengaluru and one in Hyderabad. He added that the Chennai store is the fourth outlet and the second outside Karnataka. On network expansion plans, he said, “By November we will have 15 stores and by March 2025 we will have 50 stores and by March 2026 we will have 100 stores (in total).” The company sells only one product in Chennai with a variant “Indy” priced at Rs 1.47 lakh. Mani said the company will add another product to its portfolio and it is expected to be unveiled in early 2026. On factory operations, he said the company assembles battery packs at the production facility which has a capacity of around 1 lakh units. He said around 9,000 units of the scooter “Indy” are made in a month.
River Mobility imports cells from China and Korea and it accounts for 25 per cent of the total cost of the vehicle. “The cost of cells is really getting better these days. It is improving. The situation will improve further once India gets a manufacturing facility for cells,” he said. On whether additional funds need to be raised, Mani said his company may consider a second round of fund raising sometime next year. “We are also thinking of setting up a new factory and we are looking to expand dealership to around 500 cities,” he said, without providing further details on the capital required to pursue the company’s expansion plans. Mani said the company will open its second company-owned store in Bengaluru next week and another store is planned in September. “One store is going to open at Indira Nagar 100 Feet Road and the fourth store (in Bengaluru) is going to open at Rajaji Nagar by September. This way there will be four stores in Bengaluru, two of which will be company-owned and two dealer-owned,” he said. The company also plans to expand in Kochi, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur.
