Mahindra and Mahindra today announced its decision to invest Rs. 176 crore in the popular self-driving car rental and shared mobility company - Zoomcar Inc. As part of this deal, Mahindra Group will get approximately 16 per cent stake in Zoomcar Inc., on an as converted to common stock of Zoomcar Inc on a fully diluted basis. Mahindra says that this investment is part of their strategy to promote and participate in sustainable mobility solutions, including multi-modal urban mobility.
Mahindra has been promoting Electric Vehicles along with the promotion of shared mobility and in early 2017, Mahindra and Zoomcar announced a partnership to introduce electric vehicles into the shared mobility space. In fact, the latter has already Mahindra e20Plus electric vehicles to its fleet, which is available in Mysore, Bangalore, and Hyderabad, and going forward, Zoomcar intends to add 500+ Mahindra EVs across more than 20 cities pan-India, in the first half of 2018.
Talking about this latest investment, Pawan Goenka, Managing Director, Mahindra & Mahindra mentioned, "At Mahindra, we are playing a pioneering role in the shared mobility business and are looking forward to an impetus in it through this investment in Zoomcar. We are confident that this partnership with Zoomcar will help further our vision to transform mobility in the country, thereby creating a more connected ecosystem".
On the other hand, Greg Moran, Co-Founder and CEO, Zoomcar said, "We are incredibly excited to welcome the Mahindra team on board for this next phase of growth, within the Indian self-drive mobility space. Our collaboration with Mahindra dates back to 2013 when we first kicked-off in Bangalore. Most importantly, Mahindra shares Zoomcar's vision for multi-modal urban mobility and we look forward to leveraging their diverse platform to help accelerate the transformation to a shared, electric mobility future for India".
Mahindra is not the first car manufacturer to invest in Zoomcar on account of shared mobility space. In early 2016, Ford Motor Company's Smart Mobility LLC led a Rs. 161 crore investment in Zoomcar, along with the existing investors Sequoia Capital, Nokia Growth Partners and Empire Angels.
