Tarun Mehta

Tarun Mehta graduated from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras with a degree in Engineering Design. During his time at IIT, he and his co-founder Swapnil Jain developed a keen interest in battery technology and electric mobility. Their early academic and practical exposure to engineering limitations in existing electric two-wheelers laid the foundational technical expertise required to build a completely new electric vehicle architecture from the ground up.

Tarun Mehta co-founded Ather Energy in 2013 with Swapnil Jain, driven by the realization that the Indian electric two-wheeler market was flooded with low-quality, imported components that offered terrible performance and battery life. Rather than simply assembling parts, Mehta championed a vertically integrated approach, insisting on building the battery pack, motor, and software stack entirely in-house. Under his leadership as CEO, Ather developed India's first truly smart electric scooter, the Ather 450, and simultaneously built the Ather Grid, a proprietary fast-charging network to alleviate range anxiety. Mehta's focus on product engineering and user experience helped legitimize the EV sector in India, attracting large investments from Hero MotoCorp and Tiger Global, and transforming Ather from a small college project into a pioneer of India's electric mobility revolution.