State-run Power Finance Corporation (PFC) on Friday said it has sanctioned a loan of ₹633 crore to Gensol Engineering (GEL) for the purchase of 5,000 passenger electric vehicles (EVs) and 1,000 cargo EVs.
The passenger EVs will be leased to Blusmart Mobility (BMPL) to expand its fleet of ride-hailing cabs. The first tranche of the loan has been disbursed, and the first lot of EV cabs has hit the roads of Delhi, the Maharatna company said.
Huge potential
PFC CMD Ravinder Singh Dhillon said, “E-mobility adoption is going on at a fast pace in the country, and we believe that there is a huge potential in this field. Through this funding, PFC has endeavoured to contribute towards India’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) goals, and this will go a long way for moving towards a healthy and sustainable mode of transport.”
The 5,000 e4Ws funded by the power sector non-banking financial company (NBFC) would result in emission savings of over 1,00,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, which equals the amount of CO2 absorbed by more than 5 million fully-grown trees in a year, he added.
With a vision of accelerating India’s net-zero goal, PFC, apart from funding renewables in a big way, has been exploring opportunities in debt funding of EVs (OEMs and fleet acquisition), battery OEMs and EV charging infrastructure.
Transformational shift
“India is set to play a pivotal role in driving global disruption in the electric mobility sector. At BluSmart, we are committed to bring this transformational shift in the sector and responsibly scale our footprint across India, BluSmart CEO Anmol Singh Jaggi said.
With this, the electric mobility solutions provider is also increasing its market share of the EV mobility segment. The financing through PFC will help the company deploy more EVs on the streets, he added.