India hasn’t found its own Tesla. Ather offers a two-wheeled solution.

The Ather S340. Photo credit: Ather eNERGY.

India does not have a good history with electric vehicles. Years ago, Bangalore-based Reva (later bought by Mahindra), launched India’s first electric car.

There was anticipation, but the Reva fell flat, not least because of a price tag that made penny-pinching Indians cringe.

There have been a smattering of others, including the Hero Electric range, but things haven’t gone so well.

The country sold 22,000 units of electric vehicles (this includes e-rickshaws) in the year ending March 31. That is embarrassingly short of the the objective of selling 6 million EVs by 2020, as aimed for by the government via its National Electric Mobility Mission Plan (NEMMP) 2020 and FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles).

It is in this landscape that Tarun Mehta and his team are trying to build the country’s first connected electric scooter – the mode of transport that, according to Tarun, “is the inevitable future [we] are heading towards.”

The company announced the launch of its S340 in February this year, where Tarun promised to marry data and intelligence in a usable electric bike.

Ather, who?

Founder and CEO Tarun Mehta. Photo Credit: Ather Energy.

Ather Energy, now employing about 100 people, was started up by IIT-Madras graduates Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain in their college Engineering Design Department in 2013.

Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal gave them seed capital, and in May 2015, they raised US$12 million from Tiger Global. Since then, Tarun and Swapnil kept building a company that operates with the motto “live curious.”

The electric bike took them about three years to build (they are still tweaking it to match their finicky expectations, I am told), but the team is now closer to their litmus test than they ever have been.

“We will be open for preorders soon, around mid-July,” Ravneet Singh Phokela, chief business officer at the company, tells Tech in Asia.

Bike of the future

On the road

Expansion drive