Will Investors Back Ather's Electric Ambitions?

In terms of market share, Ather has a long way to go in electric two-wheeler sales. It still trails Ola Electric and TVS Motor by some distance.

- Shadma Shaikh

[e-mail] BENGALURU In the summer of 2014, Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, a couple of fresh-faced engineers from IIT Madras, were in a tiny lab tinkering with battery packs for a scooter. They didn't have a factory, a supply chain or even a working scooter; just an audacious question: Could India build a world-class electric vehicle company from scratch? No shortcuts, no Chinese kits and no import-and-assemble games. Just raw engineering, homegrown talent and the audacity to think long-term in a startup ecosystem addicted to speed and ill-suited for innovation.

A little over a decade later, Ather Energy isn't just selling electric scooters. It's selling proof that innovation can be commercialised in India. But the road to that proof, from prototype to showroom, was a long one paved with struggles, and a whole lot of sheetmetal welding. From a hypothesis that fixing lithium-ion batteries could help solve a key limitation in electric scooters to actually launching one, Ather Energy's journey was shaped by trial and error.

The Bengaluru-based electric vehicle (EV) startup opened its initial public offering (IPO) for subscription on 28 April, aiming to raise around ₹2,981 crore through a fresh issue and offer-for-sale mix. In the runup to the offer, the company had slashed its IPO valuation by 44% amid global market uncertainty and reduced investor share sales.

Despite reporting a net loss of ₹1,059.7 crore in FY24, the IPO concluded on 30 April with strong all-round participation—the retail quota was booked 1.78 times while the qualified institutional buyer portion was subscribed 1.70 times. Ather is set to list on 6 May.