Kinetic Group Forays Into Battery Manufacturing With Rs 50 Crore Investment

Kinetic Group has diversified into battery manufacturing amid a revival plan that will likely make the flagship company a thousand-crore enterprise by the turn of this decade.

The auto components maker plans to invest Rs 50 crore for a battery manufacturing plant within its Ahmednagar facility, with an annual production capacity of 60,000 battery packs, according to a statement released on Friday. Customisable for two- and three-wheelers, these will be supplied to EV makers beyond the Kinetic Group.

Two types of batteries will be manufactured here: lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) and nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC). The company’s proprietary Range X battery packs will have the LFP battery packs for optimal efficiency across a range of temperatures.

Additionally, the company will make prismatic cells for three-wheelers.

The diversification into battery manufacturing follows a revival plan that group firm Kinetic Engineering Ltd. unveiled in January.

The company has lined up an investment of Rs 177 crore over the next 18 months to build its EV business under subsidiary Kinetic Watts & Volts Ltd., and service new business from the likes of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. and Renault SA.

“The focus is on both—Kinetic Engineering doing exports, building new technologies and the transmission business,” Ajinkya Firodia had told NDTV Profit then. “Half of it is in the EV business as that’s where all the growth is. So, we want to mix both and have a 40:60 ratio in favour of electric vehicles.”

The idea is to become a thousand-crore enterprise by 2029, Firodia had said then. That’s 8-10 times growth by then.

“An investment of Rs 180 crore is a lot of money for the next three years, and can definitely propel us from Rs 150-160 crore to Rs 1,000 crore,” he had said. “The learnings are in the past. Now is the time to grow.”