41st anniversary of The Times of India, Bengaluru: EVS blaze trail for rest of country
By:
Tarun Mehta
Bengaluru has always been a step ahead of the curve. Long before something becomes obvious to the rest of the country, this city finds a way to make it real. You saw it when India's software story first took root here, with companies like Infosys and Wipro quietly turning an unknown industry into India's global B calling card.
You saw it again when Flipkart rewrote how India shops, and Swiggy changed how India eats. You can see it now in how Bengaluru is shaping India's deep tech and electric vehicle story.
It is not by accident. Bengaluru is one of the few cities where you can build from scratch. If you are trying to put something new on the road, you will find what you need here: design labs, talented engineers, machine shops, early adopters, and investors ready to bet on an idea that is still just a sketch.
Once that idea becomes a prototype, you'll find people ready to test it, break it, tell you what works and what does not, and come back next week to do it all over again.
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Over the decades, this has turned Bengaluru into an unstoppable ecosystem for ambitious builders. Walk into a café in Koramangala or a co-working space in HSR Layout, and you will see this spirit in action, with founders swapping notes, engineers debating design challenges, and students hoping to join the next big thing.
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This constant flow of talent and ideas is why Bengaluru stays resilient when things do not go to plan and moves faster when they do.
Before the rest of India was fully online, Bengaluru was already building software for the world. By the 2010s, it was the testing ground for early experiments in e-commerce, payments, and hyperlocal delivery while much of the country was still warming up to smartphones. Not every bet paid off, but the habit of trying, failing, learning, and trying again built the muscle for what came next.
The same mindset that built India's IT backbone helped Bengaluru become the launchpad for India's internet startups and laid the groundwork for the EV and hardware wave.
Electric vehicles were a natural extension of that journey. As usual, Bengaluru did not wait for them to become mainstream. It backed them up early. Today, Bengaluru's EV penetration is more than double the national average, one of the highest across India's major cities.
But it is not just the number of vehicles on the road that matters. It is the entire ecosystem around them. OEMs, suppliers, battery pack makers, software firms building fleet tools, and EVonly aggregators all operate here.
You can design, prototype, test, and scale an entire EV platform without ever leaving the city.
The city's charging network has grown just as quickly as EV adoption. Today, it is normal to find charging points at tech parks, apartment basements, cafés, gyms, and malls.
This network exists thanks to early pushes like Bescom's grid expansion, combined with the efforts of OEMs and charge point operators who have connected every corner of the city. The same software, IoT, and clean energy talent that shaped our internet boom now solves practical charging, payment, and energy management challenges every day.
For us, at Ather, Bengaluru has been home for more than a decade now.
When we started out in 2013, the idea of building a premium electric scooter in India felt impossible.
The supply chain was not ready. Charging networks did not exist. But in Bengaluru, we found people who would back such dreams. From investors, to customers, to cheerleaders. Our earliest customers were practically like co-builders for us.
They showed up for test rides, gave feedback nobody asked for but everybody needed, forgave early bugs and pushed us to keep raising the bar. Some of my favourite moments are still the open-house sessions we held here.
Announce one on a Friday, and by Saturday morning the room is full of people ready to share exactly what they love and what they want fixed. This mindset turned a risky bet into something real.
Karnataka's early policy push helped, too. In 2017, the state became one of the first in India to roll out a clear and comprehensive EV and Energy Storage Policy. This policy laid out incentives for manufacturers, support for R&D, and for expanding the charging infrastructure that was almost non-existent at the time, while also giving end users the confidence and incentives to adopt EVs.
By providing clarity and confidence to suppliers, startups and investors, Karnataka made it possible for an entire ecosystem to take shape here, long before the rest of the country fully caught on. It signalled that building and adopting EVs wasn't just an idea; it was a priority worth betting on.
Today, Bengaluru is India's EV hub and the blueprint for where our next deep-tech breakthroughs will come from. Whether it's new battery chemistries, better grids or hardware we have not even imagined yet, the same fundamentals hold true: builders need the freedom to try, fail and try again; policymakers need to back that risk with clarity and intent; and early adopters need to show up, stay patient and shape the rough edges into something real.
That's how this city moves first and keeps the rest of India moving forward.
The writer is co-founder & CEO of Ather Energy
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