Battery Smart: a decentralised infrastructure model for cleaner urban mobility
Country: India Sector: Electric mobility infrastructure
Founded in 2019, Battery Smart is one of India’s leading providers of batteries-as-a-service and operates battery swapping stations for electric two- and three-wheelers.
The company serves a market segment often overlooked by traditional charging infrastructure, including delivery riders and small commercial vehicle operators. By focusing on dense urban areas and high-usage commercial vehicles, the company helps EV-users reduce downtime, lower upfront vehicle costs, and improve daily earnings by making mobility affordable, accessible and inclusive.
With more than 1,500 stations in over 50 cities and a rapidly growing base of more than 100,000 active users, Battery Smart has built a decentralised, franchise-led network model that integrates local microentrepreneurs and shopkeepers as station partners.
This model:
Leverages local shopkeepers as station partners
Enables community-level job creation
Provides fast, grid-efficient electrification
Avoids large capital expenditure requirements
The company’s battery-as-a-service platform allows users to exchange depleted batteries for fully charged units in under two minutes. This helps maximise vehicle uptime and reduce charging-related costs, which is essential for drivers who earn on a per-trip basis.
Market context: electrifying informal urban transport
India’s urban mobility sector is driven largely by two- and three-wheelers and remains a significant source of particulate emissions and local air pollution. Many vehicles used by low-income commercial drivers still rely on internal combustion engines, increasing both climate and public health risks.
Despite growing policy support for electric mobility, several structural barriers continue to hinder EV adoption. These include high upfront vehicle costs, limited access to credit for informal-sector workers, inadequate charging infrastructure, and long charging downtimes that directly affect driver earnings.
Battery swapping addresses these challenges by eliminating charging wait times, lowering the total cost of ownership, and enabling affordable, asset-light access to electric mobility. In doing so, it offers a practical and socially inclusive pathway to decarbonising India’s urban transport sector.
Climate finance solution
Battery Smart’s business model directly supports emission reductions in a segment where formal finance and infrastructure are often absent. By facilitating the electrification of small-format vehicles used for commercial transport, the company enables:
Avoidance of CO₂ and black carbon emissions from internal combustion engine vehicles
Reduction in urban air pollution, including PM2.5 and NOx
Increased daily earnings for informal-sector drivers through fuel cost savings
Improved access to mobility and employment opportunities in underserved areas
The model supports India’s national e-mobility objectives while delivering tangible improvements in local quality of life.
Capital for scalable climate infrastructure
In 2024, responsAbility committed total funding of USD 25 million to Battery Smart, with the explicit purpose of supporting expansion into smaller urban centres, including Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities where financial and physical infrastructure gaps are more acute.
The investment supports a model that can help make climate infrastructure more accessible and scalable. Beyond financing a commercially viable platform, it also helps validate a decentralised approach to electric mobility infrastructure that can serve users who are often excluded from energy transition narratives.
Why it matters
Battery Smart shows what climate finance can look like in practice. The company is not only supporting cleaner transport. It is also building infrastructure that works for informal-sector drivers, local entrepreneurs and underserved urban communities.
The case illustrates how climate finance can combine decarbonisation, inclusion and real-economy implementation. It also shows why practical infrastructure models matter: the energy transition will only scale if solutions are commercially viable, locally accessible and designed around the people who use them.
Our network offers a practical and scalable solution to decarbonising India’s informal urban transport sector, particularly for low-income drivers who cannot afford high upfront EV costs or long charging downtimes. We believe the transition to clean mobility must be both environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive.
Pulkit Khurana CEO and Co-Founder, Battery Smart
Battery Smart exemplifies how small-format infrastructure, if well designed, can deliver outsized impact. The value here is not in technological novelty, but in creating a reliable, scalable system that works for people typically excluded from energy transition narratives.
Kewal Shah Investment Officer, responsAbility
Battery swapping offers a practical pathway to scale electric mobility in India, particularly in high-use segments. By providing a chemistry-agnostic, reliable solution, this platform enables faster EV deployment in the rapidly growing three-wheeler market. It is a climate-positive innovation that addresses both global emissions and local air quality, critical for a just and accelerated energy transition.
Amit Semwal Climate Advisory Specialist, responsAbility
Sources and explanations
responsAbility, “responsAbility to Provide a Credit Facility of USD 25 Million to Battery Smart for E-Mobility Expansion”, 6 December 2024. Source for: USD 25 million credit facility, founded in 2019, India’s largest battery-swapping network for electric two- and three-wheelers, more than 1,400 swap stations, more than 35 cities, more than 60,000 active users, two-minute battery swaps and expansion into Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.
Battery Smart. Source for company-specific data, statistics and statements related to Battery Smart used in this article.
Black carbon refers to soot-like fine particulate air pollution formed by incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, wood or waste.
PM2.5 refers to fine inhalable particles with diameters of 2.5 micrometres or smaller. These particles are linked to respiratory and cardiovascular health risks.
NOx refers to nitrogen oxides, a group of air pollutants formed mainly from fuel combustion, including vehicle engines and power plants. NOx contributes to smog and can affect respiratory health.