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Ashnni Motors, a Pune-based EV startup, has raised $244,000 (Rs 2 crore) in pre-seed round from WealthTrust Capital Services. Pushpak Ranka, Dawson Menezes, Sneha Jain, and Alisha Poonawalla Menezes are some of the lead investors from WealthTrust who participated in this round.

The startup plans to utilise the funds to produce the first batch of first-generation vehicles and in-house production of Li-ion battery packs.

Founded in 2017 by Vishal Mali and Subodh Karunasagar, and incubated under the Science and Technology Park, Pune, Ashnni Motors is on a mission to design, engineer and manufacture intelligent, purpose-built EV fleets.

In 2021, the startup received a product development grant from the Department of Science and Technology,  Government of India (DST) and it was also a part of the Climate Collective accelerator programme.

“With our solution, we plan to go beyond the micro-mobility aspect with a more decentralised approach by serving individual business needs,” said Vishal Mali, Co-founder and CEO, Ashnni Motors. “Any business, small or big will now be able to create its own EV fleet according to specific requirements for last-mile delivery purposes or just daily utility needs. Our vehicles and batteries are highly reliable and can perform under extreme conditions.”

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The company has completed the pilot of one lakh kilometres with last-mile delivery companies as well as local distributors and shop owners.

“We’ve spent a substantial amount of time carefully designing, building and testing each system in our vehicles. Because we’ve conducted the pilots with our customers extensively, our product and technology platform has gotten more mature due to this direct feedback loop from the end users,” said Subodh Karunasagar, Co-founder and CTO, Ashnni Motors.

The company started operations from its newly built facility in Chakan, Pune in January 2023, which was inaugurated by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari last year.

“We will be shipping the batch of first-generation vehicles from our new facility to our early customers who have been part of our pilot and have been eagerly awaiting, by August this year,” said Mali.