Battery swapping joint venture Yuma Energy has raised $35 million in its internal Series A round from Magna International, the company announced on Tuesday.
“A majority of the fundraise will be used to add more battery units across our existing geographies,” said Muthu Subramanian, managing director and general manager of the company said in an interview with Mint. “The rest will go towards adding new nodes in new geographies.”
This is the three-year-old startup's first institutional round of funding after automotive supplier Magna and mobility-as-a-service startup Yulu entered into a joint venture to create Yuma Energy. At the time of launch, the two companies cumulatively put in $77 million to get Yuma going.
The startup's round comes at a time when funding into electric vehicles (EVs) and the ecosystem around it, is seeing investors pump in capital as they turn bullish on energy transition.
Energy storage tech has seen investors put in more money this year, compared to last year. In 2025, the sector raised $270 million across 74 deals, while so far this year it has raised $305 million across 37 deals, according to Tracxn data. Funding into energy storage tech peaked in 2024 when it raised $429 million across 80 deals.
Several notable funding rounds have taken place this year, including River Mobility's $120 million equity and debt raise, Simple Energy's $26 million Series B round, Ather Energy's $136 million qualified institutional placement, and Exponent Energy's $21 million round.
Of the fresh capital, 70% will go towards adding battery units across Yuma's existing network of 400-plus touchpoints spanning Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and the National Capital Region.
The balance amount is earmarked for the physical and electrical infrastructure needed to enter new cities. The company currently runs close to 100,000 batteries across 2,500 charging units at 400 stations, clocking 1.8-2 million swaps a month, up from roughly 50 stations and 20,000 batteries in 2023.
"Going forward, it will be a combination of going deeper in our current markets. In addition, we will be opening new markets. Chennai and Pune are on the road map," Subramanian said.
Chennai is expected to go live in the October-December quarter of this fiscal, followed by Pune, driven by higher EV penetration and a dense gig economy built around food delivery and quick commerce. Both cities will run purely two-wheeler operations.
In the north, Yuma plans to grow its NCR network by 50-100% over the next 12 months, with about a fifth of that incremental demand coming from three-wheelers; its e-rickshaw push stays concentrated in Jaipur and Lucknow, within the Uttar Pradesh belt.
"…it's primarily based on the form factors of vehicles that are used in the regions. E-rickshaws are not present in the south at all. The e-rickshaw market is primarily in the north, primarily in the Uttar Pradesh belt," Subramanian said.
Yulu remains an anchor customer for Yuma, given its contribution to the joint venture. However, over the past year, Yuma has also partnered with other original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), particularly companies building vehicles focused on fleet operations.
These partnerships include Quantum Energy, Motovolt Mobility, Kinetic Green and e-Sprinto.
Yuma tracks profitability at the individual-station level rather than as a single company-wide number, and the picture remains uneven as the network expands.
