Charging infrastructure should be in place before ebuses: Eka Mobility

EKA Mobility says depot and charging infrastructure, rather than bus supply, is now the biggest hurdle to faster e-bus deployment in India

The biggest bottleneck for electric bus (ebus) deployment in India is no longer the availability or delivery of buses but the readiness of depots, Eka Mobility Founder and Chairman Sudhir Mehta said on Monday, calling for depot and charging infrastructure development to be taken out of the bus tendering process.

 In an interview with Business Standard, Mehta said charging infrastructure should be tendered before the ebuses, as it takes longer to build than to manufacture the buses.

 A depot needs electricity connections, charging equipment and civil infrastructure, with transmis­sion capacity also playing a pivotal role as large numbers of ebuses are deployed. “Depot infrastructure requires a separate scale,” he said.

 Eka was the second-largest win­ner in India’s recent ebus tender. In December 2025, it secured orders for 3,485 buses in the Centre’s 10,900-bus tender under the Prime Minister Electric Drive Revolution in Innovative Vehicle Enhancement (PM eDRIVE) scheme.

 He said ebus procurement it­self has become faster as the indu­stry has matured. Bus formats and pro­ducts have become more standardised, while procurement and financing processes are now better understood. This means governments can reduce the time between awarding a bus contract and actually putting vehicles into service if infrastructure is handled separately.

 Mehta proposed that governments should first map the depot and charging infrastructure requ­ired over several years. “Ideally, we should map out the charging infrastructure requirement for the next five years and tender it first. That process can take 12 to 24 months. Once the infrastructure is ready, deploying the buses is a matter of a few months,” he said.

 The delay in depot readiness has also affected Eka’s production planning. Mehta said the company had buses ready at its plant but could not send them because the depots were not ready. Eka now plans production based on when the depots are expected to be ready.

 “We are now monitoring depot availability and only producing the bus when the depots are ready. This is one of our learnings because we discovered that we had ended up with too much stock (ready ebuses in the factory),” he said.

Under the current system in India, the tender usually involves an original equipment manufacturer (OEM), which makes the buses, and an operating partner, which deploys them. Eka is only the OEM. It makes and services the buses but does not operate them.

 The operating partner must arrange financing, chargers, electricity connections, depot work, and drivers. There can also be a delay of six to eight months before a state issues the letter of award (LoA), which allows the project to move ahead.

After the LoA, the operator has to secure financing and prepare the depot. But banks also want charging infrastructure in place before financing the buses. Mehta said this creates a cycle that can delay deliveries.

 “The bank will not give them a loan for the bus until the charging infrastructure is ready. If the bank does not give them the loan, I cannot give them the bus without payment... This is a vicious cycle,” he said. Eka currently has an order book of almost 10,500 ebuses. It has delivered more than 1,500 and has around 9,000 ebuses left to deliver over the next 18-24 months. The orders cover more than 40 cities. The company is completing a 750-bus order for Rajasthan and has also started operations in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. Mehta said Eka’s ebus deliveries could rise from around 500 last financial year (2025-26/FY26) to about 1,800 this financial year (2026-27/FY27). For the following financial year (2027-28), the company is targeting 4,000-4,500 ebus deliveries. The company delivered about 200 ebuses last month and expects to reach deliveries of about 400 per month by March.

 Mehta said the next major opportunity for Eka would be electric trucks (etrucks), where the company has already completed trials with more than 50 customers. Its etrucks are homologated, meaning they have received regulatory approval for sale, but commercial sales have not yet begun.

 The company is initially setting up capacity to produce about 3,000 etrucks a year. Mehta said this capacity could be expanded quickly because Eka’s plants are modular and can be configured for ebuses or etrucks depending on demand. He said the company would first focus on validating the business case before rapidly scaling truck volumes.

 Mehta expects the etruck market to expand sharply over the next five years. He sees the opportunity in etrucks at eight to 10 times the size of the ebus opportunity. He also expects heavy etrucks to account for 30-50 per cent of the market within five years, provided the right products, financing, and charging infrastructure become available.

 “Trucks are a very unforgiving game. People have to be convinced from the unit economics. Once they are, the numbers will come. And five years down the line, I think the Indian market will be shocked at the size of the Indian market of etrucks,” he said.

 Eka is also expanding beyond India, with ebuses already operating in Zanzibar and South Africa. Mehta said the company has 50 buses running in Zanzibar and is looking to deploy another 100 there next year. It is also exploring assembly facilities with partners in Africa, where he sees Indian electric commercial vehicles as competitive.

 

On the financial side, Mehta said Eka’s revenue was around Rs 750 crore last financial year (FY26) and could reach about Rs 2,000 crore this financial year (FY27). He said the company sees the potential to at least double revenue annually for the next few years and believes it could reach $1 billion in revenue by 2029-30.