Ather Energy hires Karan K. Punjabi as Head of Finance

Ather Energy, on Tuesday announced the appointment of Karan K. Punjabi as the Head of Finance.

The Bengaluru-based start-up is engaged in the business of designing and manufacturing smart elecrtric vehicles and associated charging infrastructure.

Karan's appointment is in continuation to the addition of senior talent across functions at Ather over the past few months, as it prepares to commence production and delivery of the S340.

Karan is a Chartered Accountant and brings with him over 12 years of rich corporate finance experience.

In his previous role, he was CFO at Arvind Internet where he contributed significantly in cost reductions, increasing efficiency of spends and strategy formulation.

"As we scale further, Karan's introduction is significant as it will help us run a tighter ship. Karan will bring more rigor in spending and investment decisions. The task cut out for him is to strike the balance between efficient financial processes and freedom to innovate", said Tarun Mehta, CEO of Ather.

Karan commenced his career at KPMG, and then moved to Flipkart where he served as Director of Business Finance. At Flipkart he led the supply chain and lifestyle category finance, and was involved in fund raising and corporate finance.

"I am excited and looking forward to be part of this younger and creative startup that has built an electric vehicle from scratch" said Karan. "I hope to use my years of experience to work with the key stakeholders on budgeting, annual planning as well as on financial strategy for the business going forward".

Ather Energy, founded by IIT graduates Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain in 2013, received funding of Rs 205 crore from Hero MotoCorp, $ 12 mn from Tiger Global and $ 1 mn from Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal.

Ather is building India's first truly smart and connected electric scooter, the S340. Aided by a breakthrough in-house designed Lithium-ion battery pack, the Ather S340 has a touchscreen dashboard with cloud connectivity, a host of smart features and offers a top speed of 72 kmph and a range of up to 60kms.

Ather is also setting up a charging network with its own smart charging pods. These fast charging pods will be set up initially across its three market cities - Bangalore, Chennai and Pune.