New Delhi: Startup Raptee has opened its first factory for manufacturing electric motorcycles, to be rolled out later this year, in Chennai. It is spread across 3 acres and will also house a majority of Raptee’s Research and Development team in the same campus.
Raptee plans to invest INR 85 crore in this plant which will have an annual capacity of 1 Lakh units and will serve as its primary production plant for the next 2 years. The company plans to employ 470 people for the manufacturing and further design innovation in the motorcycles. The R&D center will house state of the art development and testing facilities on-site to aid in future products. The manufacturing plant will house a dedicated battery pack assembly line also, the company said.
Dinesh Arjun, co-founder and CEO, Raptee, said, “This is a huge leap forward for us. 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. We’ve been 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 and that meant the entire property will need to be inside the City. This facility ticks all those boxes and will help service our customers better.”The centrally located property was inaugurated by Shaji Koshy, former Sr.Vice president at Royal Enfield and an advisor to Raptee.
“I am extremely happy that such young minds from Chennai have been able to develop a remarkable product and I really want to support this team who has the potential to create a big impact on the EV landscape in India and Globally. It is an honour and happy moment for me to be inaugurating the new facility for Raptee, which is now moving from their small R&D centre to a full-fledged OEM facility and I wish they run out of capacity very soon in this facility, Koshy said.
Jayapradeep Vasudevan, Chief Business Officer, Raptee, said, “This move is a big motivation for the entire team at Raptee as the new facility houses a dedicated block for the Admin and R&D, which provides a much better working ambience for our team to enjoy and contribute to the growth journey of Raptee. 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. The fact that the families of our team attended the inauguration reiterates the commitment of our team and their families’ support towards the success of Raptee. At this moment, as a team we are really happy and proud that we are progressing towards delivering a world class electric motorcycle and customer experience to become a premium EV brand.”
Early this year Raptee received a grant of INR 27 crore from the Automotive Research Association of India, a leading R&D organization set up by the automotive industry and Govt of India. The grant was given under AMTIFs (Advance Mobility Transformation & Innovation Foundation) Industry Accelerator program as a part of the Capital Goods Scheme by the Ministry of Heavy Industries, Government of India. The MOUs were exchanged in the presence of Mahendra Nath Pandey, Unione Minister for Heavy Industries.