growX Ventures, Micelio back electric mobility startup Cell Propulsion

Bengaluru-based Cellprop, which runs electric mobility solutions provider Cell Propulsion, has raised an undisclosed amount in a fresh funding round, dubbed a pre-Series A round, led by growX Ventures and Micelio.

Endiya Partners, which backed the company in a seed funding round in September 2019, also infused capital in the current round, confirmed the venture capital firm. 

Cell Propulsion will use the fresh capital to complete the pilots for its electric light commercial vehicles (LCVs), with a focus on the logistics and fleet management sectors. The company is also running a pilot with the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) for e-buses.

The company was founded in 2017 by former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) engineers Nakul Kukar, Paras Kaushal and Supratim Naskar. It builds powertrain components for electric commercial vehicles and provides software solutions such as fleet tracking and management services. 

“We initially wanted to raise a bridge round but with interest from growX and Micelio, we raised a new round during the Covid-19 related lockdown. We will be utilising the capital to also supply our initial order of e-LCVs,” Kukar, also the CEO of Cell Propulsion, told TechCircle. 

The company is working on setting up a pilot production plant, with a capacity of 200 e-LCVs, by 2021, he said.

The pandemic has also put a spanner in the company’s plans to launch its e-LCVs across multiple cities this year, Kukar said. Now, it will roll them out only in Bengaluru and expand in 2021, he said. 

“The global appetite for funding a monetizable IP product/solution addressing a large market is higher, and guides our thesis on backing deep-technology companies such as Cell Propulsion,” Abhishek Srivastava, director of Endiya Partners, an investor in this round, told TechCircle. 

The same ideology drove the fund’s investments in deep technology companies Steradian and ShieldSquare, which was bought by Israeli cybersecurity company Radware, he said.