Founded in 2011, Pravaig (formerly known as Pravaig Dynamics) only came to limelight in December 2020 when the EV startup unveiled its first electric car concept named Extinction MK1. Although the Extinction hasn’t made it to the market yet, a couple of years later, the company launched its first EV in the market in the form of the Defy.
With styling inspired by Range Rover, the Defy was a handsome-looking SUV, but we haven’t seen any unit of the SUV in the market yet. In a recent interaction with Ram Divedi, CSO and Co-founder, Pravaig, we asked the same.
Defy deliveries yet to commence
“So far we deliver vehicles for sensitive applications. So, no commercial applications yet. In a few months, we will start to roll out requests for applications/bookings of the vehicles for the regular customers too,” said Divedi. On being asked when can we expect the deliveries to start, Divedi said he expects deliveries to commence soon but didn’t reveal any specific timeline.
He also refused to mentioned a specific number to the bookings made. He conceded that deliveries faced challenges such as the global supply chain constraints, especially in airbags. Currently, Pravaig is only delivering units of Defy to sensitive applications only.
Most of Pravaig’s customers are B2B. “So they are fleet operators, they are people who already have 20,000-30,000 vehicles. And so, we are a part of these fleets and our vehicles will be used by their customers – so talking about airlines, airports, tourism companies, all these applications. And we have some direct customers and people who booked on our website, but we don’t have a network of car dealers or anything – it’s directly through our website”, said Dwivedi.
Battery manufacturing still priority
The company still identifies itself primarily as a battery manufacturing company. Besides batteries for cars, Pravaig is involved in manufacturing batteries for other applications like solar farms, UPS systems for data centres, and military batteries for the army. Pravaig also exports batteries to European markets and other foreign markets.
Pravaig currently operates out of its production facility and adjoining R&D centre based in the outskirts of Bengaluru. The production facility currently manufactures batteries whose overall localisation stand at around 80%. At the same time, Pravaig claims to contract manufacture 450 cars per month for other brands.
The same factory will be used to manufacture Pravaig’s EVs for the consumer market, in the future. Divedi said Pravaig wants to scale its annual production to 3000 units. The Bengaluru-based startup also inked an MoU with Saudi Arabia Venture Studio to set up a manufacturing facility in the country. However, Divedi categorically mentioned that they are looking at the middle east specifically for battery manufacturing. “Car manufacturing is something we will keep in India”, said Divedi.
