Ather Energy Ltd is borrowing a page from legacy two-wheeler makers, adopting time-tested designs and pairing them with its tech features to mount its most direct assault yet on market leaders TVS Motor Co. and Bajaj Auto Ltd.
After establishing its brand with sleek, performance-oriented models, the Bengaluru-based electric vehicle maker is shifting toward practical, mainstream design elements, such as handlebar-mounted headlights, centre stands, and longer seating, to appeal to everyday commuters, Ather chief executive Tarun Mehta told Mint. The shift aims to replicate the mass adoption achieved decades ago by scooters like the Honda Activa.
Despite an 82% surge in sales during FY26 that elevated Ather to India’s third-largest electric two-wheeler manufacturer, the company still faces stiff competition. Its entry-level vehicles remain roughly 30% more expensive than legacy petrol alternatives, and competitors TVS and Bajaj continue to hold larger market shares.
Mehta said the company will not sacrifice brand equity or chase volume purely for market dominance as it enters the competitive ₹1–1.2 lakh price bracket. Instead, Ather is focusing on scaling, expanding annual manufacturing capacity to 920,000 units by late 2027 to capture long-term demand.
The brand started with a performance-focused 450 scooter range to establish Ather as a technology-led EV brand, with Mehta saying the company first needed to build something “magical” and differentiated before adapting its technology for a wider audience.
When asked whether the company is chasing the familiarity legacy brands built over the past few decades with scooters, Mehta said it has to strike a balance.
“It's a very delicate balance. If all you do is solve for expectations, you end up with the boring non-aspirational scooter. If all you do is build the magic, then you're not able to solve for a large chunk of the customers,” Mehta said.
“The right sequence that we believe will work is to first figure out something magical. As a new brand, you need something at your core where you're truly differentiated,” he added.
Some of the traditional elements it has tried to include in its latest offering, Konarc, are a centre stand, a headlight in the handlebars, and longer seats, giving the product a more traditional scooter look. These elements have been added, along with a new set of features across braking, charging, and suspension.
Tough act to follow
The task of recreating what legacy companies were able to do remains a tall one, owing to the pricier scooters. For instance, the entry variant of Ather's new product remains 30% pricier than the entry-level variant of an Activa.
Founded in 2013, Ather began selling electric scooters in 2018 with its 450 range and later expanded into a more family-focused scooter, the Rizta, in 2024, which helped it scale its sales and take on market leaders TVS, Bajaj, and Ola Electric.
It ended fiscal year 2026 as the third-largest EV two-wheeler maker, ahead of Ola Electric and Hero Motocorp, with sales jumping 82% to 239,178, giving it a 17% market share, according to data from the Federation of Automobile Dealers Association (Fada).
As sales scaled, its shares have jumped by 438% over the past year since it listed in May 2025.
“The challenge for Ather is not the adoption of new elements or features, but the adoption of electric as a reliable and friendly alternative to the legacy scooter, easy to operate across all age bands and genders,” Avik Chattopadhyay, founder, Indian School for Design of Automobiles, XLRI Delhi-NCR, said.
While the company scales, it still lags behind TVS and Bajaj, which ended FY26 with 24% and 21% market share, a gap it could look to close with new mass-market products built on the EL platform.
Mehta, however, the company has two very different success metrics and will not chase market share even as it enters the cheaper ₹1-1.2 lakh category.
“Our success metric is not market share; our success metric is where our brand equity is, how strong the brand is, how much favour we are able to get from the market,” Mehta explains.
Raising capacity
“Second thing I would worry about tactically is, you know, just how much of what we can produce we are able to sell. I think we have entered over the last year a fairly definitive phase of our industry where supply constraints are going to largely dictate how numbers shape up,” Mehta noted.
The product push comes after the company achieved operating profit before depreciation and amortization in the April to June quarter, making it the first new-age EV two-wheeler brand to achieve the feat.
He noted that it would be folly to look at sales numbers and market shares as a reflection of how this brand is shaping up in the long term.
“The better focus would be on operations and figuring out how we are able to scale up our operations, manufacturing, and every time we do that, hopefully demand is staying ahead,” he said.
Ather is expanding its capacity from 420,000 annually currently to 920,000 annually by the end of 2027 as it opens a new factory in Chattrapati Sambhaji Nagar.
The capacity expansion would give it a monthly capacity of 75,000, indicating the demand it expects over the next couple of years.