Peel Works to replace entire delivery vehicle fleet to electric; to procure 100 EVs

New Delhi: Business-to-business commerce player Peel Works is probably the first firm that is planning to replace its entire fleet of fossil fuel-based delivery vehicles with electric ones and procure 100 EVs in the first phase.

Peel Works, a Mumbai-headquartered B2B (business-to-business) grocery e-commerce company, is in talks with Piaggio, Tata Motors, Mahindra and Greaves for procuring 100 EVs (electric vehicles) for its distribution business.

It operates the retail management platform, Taikee, and Manpower, Payroll management and Logistics as service platform 1SF.

"We have plans to shift entirely to EVs (electric vehicles). As of now, in the first phase, we are planning to take 100 EVs ahead of this festival season. If it went well then we will go for more EVs deployment," the company's co-founder and supply chain Head, Lt Col Pushkar Raj (Retd) told PTI.

He further told that the company is in talks with Piaggio, Tata Motors, Mahindra, and Greaves to procure 100 EVs (light goods vehicles) to replace the entire fleet of delivery vehicles.

Raj explained that the company has worked to recover the entire cost of shifting to EVs in two and half years (30 months).

The low cost of operation will help to recover the high cost of EVs (compared to fossil fuel-based) as the running cost of just Re one per km for electric against Rs 4 to 5 per km for internal combustion engine (ICE).

The firm was operating in 25 cities earlier and recently remodelled its business to scale rapidly with sustainable economics. The replacement of traditional fossil fuel commercial vehicles with EVs is part of the business remodelling exercise.

"The grocery market is an ocean of opportunities. However, the economics needed to sit right from the first shipment to serve the market. In our experience, sweating assets to extract the most of every rupee is key to success here. EV fits very well into that thinking - low operating cost, low maintenance, and a steady alternate deployment model, making it a straightforward decision," Raj said.

The company intends to bring this fleet ahead of the festive season to serve the traditional stores well and enable them to compete with newer shopping channels.

It was founded in 2010 and has raised more than Rs 100 crore from various investors, including Equanimity, CESC ventures, Chiratae, Inventus Capital, HDFC Bank, Unilever Ventures, Indian Angel Network, and a few more.