Ather Energy
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Company History
Founded 2013 in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
In early 2013, Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, two close friends and mechanical engineering graduates from IIT Madras who had both worked in corporate automotive engineering, found themselves frustrated by the state of electric vehicles in India. At the time, the few electric scooters on Indian roads were sluggish, fragile plastic vehicles imported as cheap kits from China: they had a top speed of only 25 km/h, used heavy lead-acid batteries that degraded within six months, and broke down constantly. When Mehta and Jain initially set out to build a business, they planned to design better battery packs for existing manufacturers. However, when they visited legacy Indian two-wheeler factories, they discovered that nobody cared about engineering an electric vehicle properly; incumbents viewed EVs merely as a compliance exercise. Mehta and Jain made the daring decision to build an entire smart electric scooter from scratch. Returning to IIT Madras, they received an incubation grant from the Department of Science and Technology and access to the university's research laboratories. For five years, operating out of a small garage in Chennai and later Bengaluru, the founders built dozens of prototypes, painstakingly engineering custom algorithms for regenerative braking and thermal cooling. In 2014, impressed by their engineering rigor, Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal invested $1 million in seed funding. In June 2018, Ather launched the commercial Ather 450, completely resetting Indian consumer expectations and proving that an Indian startup could engineer an electric scooter that was faster, smarter, and more reliable than traditional petrol vehicles.
Since its establishment in 2013, Ather Energy expanded from an early-stage venture into a recognized leader in Electric Vehicles (EV), Smart Two-Wheelers, Fast-Charging Infrastructure, Battery Technology & Clean Mobility, overcoming key market challenges.
Over its history, Ather Energy executed decisive strategic pivots toward scalable monetization and digital distribution, securing its current market leadership.
By continually modernizing operations and embracing workflow automation, Ather Energy maintains resilience through changing technological and economic cycles.