Electric car production startup of billionaire Ruben Vardanyan and head of Kamaz looking for $150 million investment
YEREVAN, October 14. /ARKA/. Electric car production startup set up by billionaire Ruben Vardanyan and head of Russia's largest truckmaker Kamaz is looking for $150 million investment, according to RTVI.
The startup called Kama appeared in Russia at the end of 2021 after Ruben Vardanyan and the head of Kamaz Sergey Kogogin made investments in it.
Kama planned to produce compact urban electric cars with a range of up to 500 km on a single charge.
As RTVI found out, the startup is now negotiating to raise $150 million in financing from a pool of investors and has already reached preliminary agreements with one of them, Rosatom state-run atomic corporation.
The state corporation is building a plant at the Baltic Nuclear Power Plant to produce batteries for electric cars, and therefore counts on synergy with Kama.
The electric cars will be produced under ATOM brand in honor of the new investor. Besides Rosatom, the negotiations were conducted also with Kaspersky Lab and Yandex. The latter has already signed a MoU to replace its cab fleet with ATOMs.
RTVI found out that there are plans to set up production at a carmaker plant in Naberezhnye Chelny, which the company is going to buy out from Ford Motor Company for $20 million. The latter has been trying unsuccessfully to sell it for a couple of years already.
Ruben Vardanyan is a Russian billionaire of Armenian origin. In 1991, together with the American Peter Derby, he founded the brokerage company Troika Dialog, which he sold to Sberbank in 2011 for $1.4 billion.
The businessman is on the boards of several Russian companies, including Avtovaz, Kamaz and NOVATEK. Vardanyan is one of the founders of the Skolkovo School of Management.
In September 2022, he renounced his Russian citizenship and moved to Nagorno-Karabakh; a month later, the president of Nagorno-Karabakh Arayik Harutyunyan offered Vardanyan to assume the post of state minister (prime minister)
Vardanyan said he had transferred all his business assets to the family foundation. -0-
