While battery swapping has struggled in many markets, Magna International believes the model can work at scale in India, where millions of two- and three-wheelers and a growing delivery economy change the economics.
Magna is placing that bet on Yuma Energy, a Bengaluru-based company that runs a battery-swapping network for electric two- and three-wheelers. Yuma, which spun out of mobility startup Yulu in early 2023, has completed more than 60 million swaps and has about 100,000 batteries deployed across its network, Yuma managing director Muthu Subramanian said.
Magna is investing another $35 million in Yuma, increasing the auto supplier’s stake from the 51% it took when the joint venture formed, Subramanian said in an interview. As a result, Yulu’s 49% stake will be diluted; Subramanian declined to disclose the new ownership split. Magna confirmed that Yulu and Yuma are its only startup investments in India and that in 2022 the company committed a combined $77 million to the two businesses, with $25 million to Yulu and $52 million to the Yuma joint venture.
Magna’s investment is linked to India’s growing gig economy. Delivery riders lose time and income when they charge EVs. Subramanian estimates that only about 10 to 15 percent of vehicles used by gig workers in India are electric today, which leaves room for operators such as Yuma if more riders switch from petrol vehicles. “With Indian gig workers’ high runtime on a daily basis, an EV makes sense in terms of cost of ownership,” Subramanian said. “Uptime is important.”
Yuma targets high-mileage riders and says swapping is more practical than fast charging. A battery can be exchanged in under two minutes, Subramanian said, while even a 20- or 30-minute fast charge takes a rider off the road and requires more space and power to serve multiple vehicles.
That convenience comes with a cost. Yuma must keep batteries and swapping stations ready before demand fully materializes. “The business is capital intensive, and the unit economics will emerge as we scale,” Subramanian said.
Yuma is not profitable yet, though some older stations are already EBITDA positive, Subramanian said. The firm operates more than 400 stations with over 2,500 charging units. It reported about ₹1 billion (roughly $10.5 million) in revenue for the financial year ending March 2026 and aims to reach EBITDA break-even within the next two quarters, Subramanian said.
To reach those targets, Yuma plans to use most of Magna’s investment to expand its swapping network and double its fleet of roughly 100,000 batteries over the next 12 to 18 months. Yulu still accounts for the majority of Yuma’s 60 million lifetime swaps, though that dependence is easing: about 15 to 20 percent of swaps in the latest quarter came from customers other than Yulu, Subramanian said.
Beyond Yulu, Yuma now serves more than five fleets and has integrated its batteries with more than 10 vehicle platforms, including models from Kinetic Green, Motovolt, BGauss and Quantum Energy. Subramanian expects non-Yulu customers to account for about 25 percent of swaps within two years.
Earlier this month, Yulu raised $93 million to expand its electric two-wheeler fleet, the company said. That growth will require Yuma to expand its network to keep pace with its largest customer and to support newer fleets that adopt its batteries.
Yuma operates across 18 Indian cities, including Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and the Delhi region, as well as Jaipur, Lucknow, Indore, Coimbatore, Kochi and Kolkata. With the fresh capital, the firm plans to enter Chennai and Pune in the coming quarters and add more stations in cities where it already operates. India will remain the company’s focus for at least the next 12 to 18 months. Subramanian said that Southeast Asian markets such as Vietnam and Thailand, and parts of Africa, could be attractive later because of their large two-wheeler markets, but Yuma has not begun formal discussions about expansion.
Unlike operators that run swapping networks using third-party hardware, Yuma designs and manufactures its own battery packs and charging units. The company makes battery packs at a facility in Chennai and charging units in Bengaluru, which gives it control over the hardware and the network software that manages them, Subramanian said.
