It may be a case of automobiles in the family DNA. Third generation entrepreneur Ajinkya Firodia is learnt to be preparing to make EVs (Electric Vehicles), under Kinetic Engineering. This move will be independent of another Group company Kinetic Green, led by Ajinkya’s sibling Sulajja Firodia Motwani. Informed sources say that Kinetic Engineering’s entry into the EV space may happen by March.
“We’re going to see something very exciting coming up in 2-3 months,” Ajinkya Firodia, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director, Kinetic Engineering tells ETAuto. He wouldn’t divulge much but confirms “it’s going to be an EV”, and it’s going to be “either two-wheeler or three-wheeler EV”.
“We have set up a new team which is working on understanding the market, various technologies. They have narrowed down e-two wheelers, e-three wheelers, and components –all products within this segment and they will give their report in two to three months,” says Firodia. Even though it’s a fresh attempt to tap the emerging EV trend, it’s not the first for Kinetic Engineering. It had introduced a set of electric scooters — Spark and Sonic, around 2006 or so, but they had a short stint in the market.
The new EV move will be made under a Kinetic Engineering subsidiary called Watts and Volts (name derived from ‘nuts and bolts’), which was formed in September 2022. Professionals from established EV start-ups/OEMs and Tier1s have also been hired to form the new team. “They’re working on a unified mission in the Nagar plant. We have kept separately a huge hall where we’re going to do the manufacturing, and they’re working on developing the products and catching the pulse,” says Firodia.
A major part of an INR 1000 crore plan
The INR 150 crore Kinetic Engineering, which supplies a range of components like shafts, gearboxes, and axles, also ventured into components like EV transmission, e-axle, chassis a couple of years ago. The new initiatives also helped Kinetic Engineering transition from a loss making entity till 2021, to a profitable organisation now. From a loss of over INR 6 crore in 2021, Kinetic Engineering clocked profit of around INR 5 crore in 2024.
With a ‘Reinvent and Grow’ vision, Kinetic Engineering plans to raise INR 177 crore, of which INR 160 core is being planned to be invested by the promoter Firodia family over the next year and a half. With the fresh investments, the Firodias want to increase their stake from 59%, to 70% by 2027. The rest of the planned investment is expected to be made by a set of HNIs.
Buoyed by growth prospects in the emerging EV industry, Kinetic Engineering has set an annual revenue target of INR 1,000 crore by 2029. The company expects Watts and Volts to be the main pillar of growth with a projected contribution of around INR 650 crore to the larger target. Accordingly, of the INR 177 crore investment plan, INR 100 will be invested in this entity, says Firodia.
The planned move of Kinetic Engineering getting into the EV space may also mean competing with another Group company Kinetic Green, but a source says that the two players “will never conflict”, and they will “always have an understanding”. In order to avoid competition within the Group entities, it could be they broadly focus more on specific markets segments, like Kinetic Green could be more more B2B EV-led, , while Kinetic Engineering taps the B2C segment in terms of two-wheelers at least.
While the strategies get finalised, one thing is clear that Kinetic Engineering will have to have a foolproof plan for its re-entry plan to succeed. As Adil Jal Darukhanawala, auto historian and a pioneer motoring journalist, puts it, “This will be Kinetic Engineering’s most crucial step forward to regain prominence. Kinetic has a good brand recall, but it also is a double-edged sword because the company couldn’t sustain its two-wheeler business earlier, and had exited the space,”
