Matel Raises ₹130 Crore to Scale Magnet-Free Motors and EV Powertrains

A ₹130-crore round for the unglamorous heart of the EV

Pune-based Matel Motion & Energy Solutions has raised ₹130 crore — about $15 million — in a Series B round led by early-growth investor UC Impower. Catamaran, the family office founded by Infosys co-founder N. R. Narayana Murthy, joined as a new backer, while existing investor Transition VC also participated.

Founded in 2017, Matel designs and manufactures the components that actually turn electricity into motion: energy-efficient motors, motor controllers and integrated powertrains for automotive and industrial use, spanning electric vehicles, pumping equipment and cooling systems. It is exactly the kind of unglamorous, hard-to-build hardware that India has long imported and is now trying to make at home.

Motors without rare-earth magnets

Matel's technology pitch rests on two ideas. The first is efficiency: the company builds permanent-magnet synchronous motors rated to IE5, the highest efficiency class in the international standard for industrial motors, which wastes less energy as heat and squeezes more work out of every unit of electricity.

The second, and strategically more interesting, is its magnet-free motor technology. Conventional high-performance motors depend on permanent magnets made from rare-earth elements — a supply chain dominated by China and vulnerable to export controls. Motor designs that deliver comparable performance without those magnets sidestep that dependency altogether. For an India trying to localise its EV supply chain and insulate it from geopolitical shocks, a home-grown magnet-free motor is more than an engineering curiosity.

Where the money goes

Matel plans to use the capital to expand manufacturing capacity, strengthen research and development, accelerate product development and hire. It also intends to broaden its product portfolio, push into the electric commercial-vehicle segment — trucks and larger vehicles, where powertrain demands are heavier — and expand internationally.

The round lands at a moment when India's EV story is shifting from assembling vehicles to owning the technology inside them. Batteries attract most of the attention and capital, but the motor and its power electronics determine how efficiently a vehicle uses the energy those batteries store. Backing a components specialist rather than a vehicle brand is a bet that the durable value in electric mobility sits in this deeper layer of the stack.

A crowded but strategic niche

Matel is not alone; a clutch of Indian startups is chasing the same goal of efficient, indigenously designed motors, several of them working on magnet-free or reduced-magnet designs. That competition reflects how central the technology has become to the country's twin ambitions of decarbonising transport and reducing its reliance on imported critical materials.

For its backers, the appeal is a manufacturer with real products, industrial as well as automotive customers, and a technology roadmap pointed at exactly the bottlenecks — efficiency and rare-earth dependence — that India's policymakers are most anxious to solve. Whether Matel can scale manufacturing fast enough to hold its lead is the test the ₹130 crore is meant to fund.

Sources

• Transition VC-backed Matel raises Rs 130 Cr in Series B round led by UC Impower — Entrackr
• Matel Motion Raises Rs 130 Crore in Series B Led by UC Impower — Autocar Professional
• Matel Motion & Energy Solutions secures INR 130 Cr in Series B funding led by UC Impower — EVreporter