Electric vehicle maker Aether Energy has raised Rs 286 crore ($34.5 million) through debt and equity.

According to filings with the Registrar of Companies (ROC), venture debt firm Stride Ventures invested Rs 200 crore through non-convertible debentures, while Athar co-founders Tarun Sanjay Mehta and Swapnil Babanlal Jain invested Rs 43.28 crore each through Series F Mandatory Convertible Preference Shares.

The information was first reported by Entracker.

The current funding round comes nine months after the IPO-bound firm announced it had raised Rs 900 crore through a rights issue from existing shareholders Hero MotoCorp and GIC. In the same month, Hero MotoCorp acquired an additional 3% stake in Ether for Rs 140 crore.

According to the filings, the board of directors of Aether Energy has approved the appointment of Kaushik Dutta as an independent director of the company for a period of five years starting from May 6, 2024.

Currently the Chairman of Zomato, Dutta is the Audit Chairman and other committee member on the boards of HCL Infosystems Ltd, New Gen Software Limited, PolicyBazaar (PB Fintech) Limited and Resilient Systems Private Limited (Bharat Pe). He is the Founder Co-Director of the Chinta Arbitrage Research Institute, an NGO, and an Associate Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

Last month, reports surfaced that Ather Energy was in talks with existing investors to raise $95 million in pre-IPO funding to help the company earn a place in the unicorn club.

Founded in 2013 by Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, the EV manufacturing company has a network of 1,400 charging stations across 100 cities. The company mainly manufactures three electric scooters namely Aether 450X, Aether 450 Plus and Aether 450S.

In the 2021-22 financial year, they had reported a widened loss of Rs 344.1 crore, surpassing the loss of Rs 233.3 crore in the previous financial year.