Two IIT Madras graduates took apart a scooter in a lab. What they put back together changed India's EV future.
Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain didn't enter the EV market — they built it. From a touchscreen that no Indian scooter had ever attempted, to 2,600 charging points across 300 cities, to India's second EV two-wheeler IPO in May 2025. Ather Energy is the story of what happens when engineers refuse to accept that a product category is broken beyond repair.
Tarun Mehta & Swapnil Jain
Co-Founders · Ather Energy
The Scooter They Took Apart in a Lab
In 2013, Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain were final-year students at IIT Madras's Research Park in Chennai, trying to work out what to build. Both had completed dual degrees in Engineering Design — a programme that trained you not just to make things, but to understand why the things that already existed were wrong.
They bought a YO EXL electric scooter and disassembled it. What they found confirmed what they suspected: the electric scooters of 2013 were not innovations. They were petrol scooters with a lead-acid battery bolted in, producing something underpowered, range-limited, mechanically unreliable, and insulting to ride. No intelligence. No character. No reason for an urban Indian to choose them over a 150cc Honda.
"Electric vehicles were inevitable," Mehta would later say. But to become inevitable, they first had to become genuinely good. Ather Energy was the attempt to make that happen — built from day one on the belief that an electric scooter had to be smarter, faster, and better-connected than anything running on petrol.
Hero MotoCorp, the 450X and Vertical Integration
The Hero MotoCorp investment in 2016 was Ather's defining inflection point. India's largest two-wheeler manufacturer — with 75 million vehicles on Indian roads — chose to back a three-year-old startup over any of the established players or its own internal EV programme. The implicit message: Ather was building something that Hero couldn't.
The Ather 450X, launched in 2020, delivered on that trust. It was India's first scooter with a capacitive 7-inch touchscreen, Google Maps navigation built into the dashboard, over-the-air software updates, ride history analytics, and a hill-hold feature that made Indian traffic genuinely liveable. It accelerated from 0 to 40 km/h in 3.3 seconds. It was IP67 water resistant. It received new features by OTA every few months — updates that most existing scooters would have needed a hardware recall to match.
Ather's vertical integration strategy was the enabler. The company designed its own battery packs, motor controllers, vehicle software, and Ather Grid charging network in-house. This made development slower and more expensive — but it made the experience impossible for fast followers to replicate without building the same capabilities from scratch.
Rizta, the IPO and What Comes Next
Ather's strategic challenge through 2022–24 was clear: how to bring the intelligence and quality of the 450X to price points that reach beyond premium urban buyers. The Ather 450S and the Rizta — a family scooter with 34 litres of storage, traction control, and Ather's connected ecosystem — were the answers.
The Rizta proved particularly important. While the 450X dominated in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, the Rizta opened northern and western India — markets where family utility matters more than 0–40 acceleration. Sales crossed 1.26 lakh units in FY2024 and continued growing in FY2025.
In May 2025, Ather listed on NSE and BSE — India's second pure-play EV two-wheeler IPO. The ₹2,981 crore offering valued the company at approximately $1.3 billion. IIT Madras, which seeded the company with ₹25 lakh in 2014, booked 200x+ returns. Tiger Global's 732% return and Hero MotoCorp's 120% confirmed that the decade of patient, engineering-first building had been worth it. IPO proceeds are earmarked for Factory 3.0 in Maharashtra — the manufacturing scale needed to challenge Ola Electric and TVS for market leadership.
"The biggest challenge and opportunity when you are building an electric vehicle in India is that there is no local ecosystem — not just vendors but also talent. We completely missed this when we started. That's why our timelines looked different. But we had to build it all ourselves, and that is exactly what makes us difficult to copy."
— Tarun Mehta, Co-Founder & CEO, Ather Energy
Company Timeline
- Oct 2013
Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain found Ather Energy at IIT Madras Research Park. They disassemble a YO EXL scooter, study its primitive lead-acid internals, and decide they can build something vastly better.
- 2014
First funding: ₹45 lakh from Technology Development Board and IIT Madras. In December, Flipkart founders Sachin and Binny Bansal invest $1 million seed — one of their first angel bets post-Flipkart success.
- 2015–16
$12 million from Tiger Global. First scooter prototype, the S340, unveiled at Surge conference in Bengaluru with a touchscreen dashboard — a feature no electric scooter in India had attempted.
- 2016–19
Hero MotoCorp invests ₹180 crore (Series B, 2016), then ₹130 crore more (2018). Sachin Bansal leads $51M round in 2019. Ather 450 launched — India's fastest electric scooter at the time. MoU signed with Tamil Nadu for Hosur factory.
- 2020–22
Hosur manufacturing plant begins operations (January 2021) — capacity: 110,000 scooters/year. Ather 450X launched with capacitive touchscreen and OTA updates. Caladium Investment (GIC affiliate) leads $50M round in October 2022.
- 2023–24
Hero MotoCorp infuses ₹1,000 crore (September 2023). Ather 450S launched for mass-market segment. Rizta — a family scooter — launched in 2024. NIIF leads $71.4M Series E (August 2024). DRHP filed with SEBI (September 2024). Unicorn status achieved.
- May 2025
Ather Energy IPO: ₹2,981 crore raised at ₹304–321/share. Listed on NSE & BSE on May 6, 2025 — India's second pure-play EV two-wheeler IPO. IIT Madras earns 200x+ returns. Founders earn 15.2x. Total funding: $502M.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who are Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain and what is their background?
Both are IIT Madras graduates (2012 batch, Dual Degree in Engineering Design). Tarun Mehta is CEO and briefly worked at Ashok Leyland, interning at Mercedes-Benz during college. Swapnil Jain is CTO and interned at General Motors and BHEL. They started Ather at the IIT Madras Research Park incubator, where the institute also became an early investor.
How does Ather Energy compare to Ola Electric and TVS iQube?
Ather positions as the premium, software-first electric scooter with the deepest vertical integration. The 450X is typically priced higher than Ola S1 variants but competes on build quality, OTA updates, touchscreen interface, and brand trust earned over 10+ years of pure EV focus. TVS iQube targets a similar premium urban segment. Ather's Rizta now directly challenges the mainstream family scooter market. Ather is India's fourth-largest e2W maker by volume after Ola, TVS, and Bajaj Auto.
What is Ather's Factory 3.0?
Factory 3.0 is Ather Energy's new electric two-wheeler manufacturing plant being set up in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra, funded by IPO proceeds. It is designed to increase production capacity beyond the current Hosur, Tamil Nadu facility (110,000 scooters/year capacity) and reduce per-unit costs as Ather scales toward market leadership against Ola Electric and TVS.
What returns did investors make on the Ather Energy IPO?
IIT Madras incubation cells earned 200x+ returns on a ₹25 lakh investment made in 2014. Founders Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain earned 15.2x returns via OFS. Tiger Global earned 732% return (8.3x). Hero MotoCorp earned 120% return on ₹1,300 crore+ invested. Caladium Investment (GIC affiliate) also sold shares worth ₹192.7 crore in the OFS.