New Delhi, Sept. 11 -- International Financial Corporation (IFC), the private-sector investment arm of the World Bank Group, said Thursday it is investing a total of $137 million (about Rs 1,211 crore) in two Indian electric mobility companies.
IFC is providing $100 million to JBM Ecolife Mobility Pvt Ltd, a unit of Mumbai-listed auto-component maker JBM Auto Ltd, and $37 million in mezzanine capital to GreenCell Mobility, which is backed by private equity firm Eversource Capital.
The announcement comes several weeks after VCCircle reported on fundraising plans of both JBM Ecolife and GreenCell. VCCircle first reported about JBM Ecolife's plans to raise capital from a clutch of international development financial institutions in July. Last month, VCCircle reported that IFC was looking to invest $37 million in GreenCell Mobility and an additional $70 million in its subsidiaries.
These investments will help create 12,000 jobs and deploy 4,000 e-buses and charging stations across 39 municipalities in Maharashtra, Assam, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, and New Delhi, IFC said in a statement.
"E-mobility is the future-and we are making it real through investments in leaders like JBM," said IFC managing director Makhtar Diop. "By leveraging innovative financing and reliable guarantees, we're mobilizing private capital at scale. India's leadership is accelerating its own transition while shaping how cities worldwide finance the next generation of mobility."
The deal with JBM Ecolife is IFC's first capital investment in the e-bus sector in Asia and its largest globally, the Indian company said in a separate statement. JBM Ecolife said it will use the debt capital to deploy electric buses across cities in Maharashtra, Assam, and Gujarat.
The capital raise comes less than a year after the mobility firm secured $100 million from Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) in September last year. AIIB and ADB had given JBM Ecolife $50 million each in the form of credit, VCCircle reported previously.
"Over the last decade, we have successfully deployed our zero-emission public mobility solutions across over 20 cities pan-India and globally across Europe, Middle East, and the APAC region," said Nishant Arya, vice chairman and managing director.
JBM Ecolife operates electric buses across multiple cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Surat, Hyderabad, Cuttack and many others. So far, it has deployed more than 2,500 e-buses across 10 states and 15 airports and currently has an order book of 11,000 more under execution.
In February, the company said it had bagged an order for 1,021 electric buses, valued at Rs 5,500 crore, under the Indian government's PM e-Bus Sewa Scheme-2 initiative. As part of this programme, the buses will be deployed in 19 cities in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Haryana. Under this scheme, the company will be responsible for end-to-end execution.
Meanwhile, GreenCell is one of India's largest electric bus operators. Its premium intercity electric bus brand NueGo connects over 100 cities across India.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.