With $1.6M funding, Twenty Two Motors to launch 'smart scooter'

Twenty Two Motors, a Gurgaon-based automobile startup has raised $1.6 million in a pre-series A round funding led by Ishwar Singh, CEO, Haryana Industries. Farhaan Shabbir, former Director of Harley-Davidson also joined the investment round to further strengthen his belief in the startup company he joined as a founding member.

“We have strategically invested in TTMPL as we could find synergies between both the businesses. Industrial house will gain insights in EV domain while Twenty Two Motors will have increased capabilities to shorten their product development cycle, said Ishwar Singh, CEO, Haryana Group of Industries, an automobile component manufacturer.

Incorporated in August 2016 by Parveen Kharb and Vijay Chandrawat, Twenty Two Motors aims to make effective electrical vehicle (EV) technology affordable for the current generation. The company promises to deliver India’s first ‘truly smart scooter’ to the masses by the first quarter of 2018.

“Tremendous work has been done in the prototyping and developing of the highly effective EV since our launch. We have been able to attract the seasoned and quality talent from major Auto companies. Major hurdles of developing Lithium-ion battery, battery management system & smart electronics has also been resolved. This investment is an acknowledgment of our belief that we are working on the product for future generations,” said Parveen Kharb, Co-founder & CEO, Twenty Two Motors.

The company has developed the Lithium Ion battery pack and BMS by taking into consideration Indian temperature profile and thus optimizing performance and battery life. Smart scooter will be fully IoT compliant having devices like GPS, GPRS, gyroscope, accelerometer making it virtually theft proof. Data from these IoT devices will be decoded by servers by using data mining and Artificial intelligence techniques to precisely determine to ride behavior of the user. A user is always connected to scooter via mobile application which can also be used to control scooter access remotely. Scooter information is available on the cloud and hence all the troubleshooting and other service can be managed automatically.

“Investment will be used meticulously to build and prove the product apart from strengthening startup’s human resource capabilities. Broadly, investment will be channeled for Prototype vehicle development, Testing, Strengthening Team, Component Development and Factory Setup,” said Vijay Chandrawat, Co-founder & COO, Twenty Two Motors.