Electric vehicle manufacturer Ather 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 Ather co-founders Tarun Sanjay Mehta and Swapnil Babanlal Jain invested Rs 43.28 crore each through Series F compulsorily convertible preference shares.
The information was first reported by Entrackr.
The current funding round comes nine months after the IPO-bound firm announced that it has 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 Ather for Rs 140 crore.
As per the filings, the board of directors of Ather Energy has approved the appointment of Kaushik Dutta as an independent director of the company for a period of five years commencing from May 6, 2024.
Dutta, who is currently the chairman of Zomato, is also the audit chairman and member of other committees on the boards of HCL lnfosystems Ltd, New Gen Software Limited, PolicyBazaar (PB Fintech) Limited and Resilient Systems Private Limited (Bharat Pe).He is the founding co-director of the NGO Chintan Arbitrage Research Institute and a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
Last month, there were reports that Ather Energy was in talks with existing investors to raise $95 million in pre-IPO funding to help the company gain a place in the unicorn club.
Founded in 2013 by Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, the EV maker has a network of 1,400 charging stations across 100 cities.Ather 450X, Ather 450 Plus and Ather 450S are the three electric scooters that are currently being manufactured in India.
In FY 2021-22, they had reported an extended loss of Rs. 344.1 crore, surpassing the previous fiscal's loss of Rs. 233.3 crore.
