Indian EV startup Zypp Electric secures ENEOS backing to fund expansion to Southeast Asia

Indian startup Zypp Electric plans to use fresh investment from Japanese oil and energy conglomerate ENEOS to take its EV rental service into Southeast Asia early next year, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.

The company aims to be in 15 markets over the next two years. Of those 15 markets, Zypp Electric plans to launch its pilot in at least one Southeast Asian market early next year, co-founder and CEO Akash Gupta told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. The latest funding, which amounted to $15 million and is led by ENEOS, is part of Zypp Electric’s Series C round, which Gupta projects will be between $35 million to $40 million and will be closed in six to eight weeks.

Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines are potential markets for Zypp Electric. All of these countries are two-wheeler-centric and handle a lot of deliveries, the co-founder said, adding that Indonesia will be the first market to begin in.

“There are different ways we are thinking and discussing that [Southeast Asia launch plan] with a few players. We’ll lay out that in the next two to three quarters,” Gupta said.

He also mentioned that the startup is in early talks to foray into the Middle East as part of its global expansion. However, the exact details of the Middle Eastern launch were not disclosed.

The Gurugram-based startup, which currently operates in major Indian cities Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Hyderabad, offers an EV-as-a-service platform that caters to e-commerce companies and gig workers. The platform includes an app and accompanying software that provides data and analytics for fleet and delivery management as well as a fleet of electric two-wheelers. Gig economy workers, which can rent the ebikes via a daily, weekly or monthly subscription, make up about 28% of Zypp’s revenue. The remainder of its business serves courier, e-commerce, food and grocery delivery and ride-sharing companies such as Amazon, BigBasket, DHL, Uber, Swiggy, Zepto and Zomato. The startup’s platform is used to make 5 million deliveries every month.

Zypp Electric has been working to expand its business — geographically and by volume. The company earlier planned to expand its fleet to 200,000 electric two-wheelers and enter 30 Indian cities by the end of 2025. However, Gupta told TechCrunch that the startup has decided to go deeper into markets rather than launching in new cities with minimal presence.

The startup has also started offering electric three-wheelers in Delhi and Bengaluru and plans to expand to Mumbai very soon. The three-wheeler fleet already contributes to 10% of the startup’s total revenue, the co-founder said.

Today, Zypp has about 15,000 electric two-wheelers in Delhi, 5,000 in Bengaluru, 1,000 in Mumbai and 500 in Hyderabad.

“The idea is to go deeper in these markets and, in parallel, launch a new market every quarter,” Gupta said. The company plans to grow its fleet of 22,000 electric two-wheelers to 50,000 over the next year. The company wants to expand further to a fleet of 200,000 electric two-wheelers over the next two and a half years, according to Gupta.

In February last year, Zypp Electric raised $25 million in a Series B round led by Taiwan’s battery-swapping company Gogoro. It also counts Goodyear Ventures, Google for Startups and Shell E4 among its key backers.

Gupta said Zypp Electric is already operationally profitable and on track to become EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes and amortization) positive in six to eight months and achieve profit after taxes in 12 to 14 months.