Besides targeting the farm sector, the start-up is also looking at selling the tractor to factories, warehouses and airports for movement of goods and baggage
A Hyderabad-based start-up Cellestial E-Mobility have come up with an operational prototype of an electric tractor that costs less than the traditional diesel-run tractors. The start-up targets a lucrative market of 8.78 lakh-unit tractor market (2019) in the country. “The market is growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 6.9 per cent. We found that the electric manufacturers of vehicles have not focused on this segment yet,” Siddarth Durairajan, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cellestial E-Mobility, said.
Cost effective
“It costs ₹5 lakh a piece as against ₹6 lakh that the regular tractor is priced at. Moreover, it will cost ₹20-35 to run the e-tractor for an hour as against ₹150 that the farmers spend every hour that they use,” Durairajan said.
The main characteristic of the product is that it comes without about 300 parts that come along with the regular tractor engine. It will help them save time and effort on maintaining the vehicle.
The firm, which began its operations in 2019, raised $2, 00,000 from a Singapore-based Angel Investor. Initially, the start-up is planning to produce 100 units a month in the first year. “We will ramp up the production in the next 2-3 three years to produce an aggregate 8,000 vehicles,” he said.
“In a residential environment, it takes six hours to fully charge the battery and with an industrial power sockets, it can fast-charge in two hours,” Syed Mubasheer Ali, Co-Founder and Partner, Cellestial E-Mobility, said.
