New Delhi: Young challengers Eka Mobility and PMI Electro Mobility are consistently outpacing larger, established players such as Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland in winning a bigger share of government electric bus (e-bus) tenders.
These two relatively new companies have secured over two-thirds of the country’s third-largest tender for 6,230 electric buses. The latest win comes about six months after they emerged as leading players in the country’s largest tender for 10,900 e-buses, according to two executives aware of the matter.
India’s largest bus makers, including , Ashok Leyland and VE Commercial Vehicles (Volvo Eicher), continuing to trail in tenders has raised questions about their electrification strategy.
According to the data reviewed by Mint, Pune-based Eka Mobility won bids for 3,981 electric buses while Gurugram-based JBM Auto and PMI Electro Mobility secured 899 and 500 buses, respectively. Mumbai-based Tata Motors secured 200 buses through the tender while Ashok Leyland and VE Commercial Vehicles Ltd did not secure any buses.
The central government scheme, operated by the heavy industries ministry, aims to assist the rollout of 14,028 e-buses, of which 10,900 were completed in the first tender for Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Surat; and 2,900 in the second for Mumbai, Pune Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad.
With private sector adoption of e-buses still at an early stage, large-scale orders are largely coming from government tenders, making these wins crucial for newer players to gain scale.
a subsidiary of Pune-based automotive seat and interior maker Pinnacle Industries, was established in 2019 and entered the e-bus space seriously in 2022. It has a strategic partnership with Japan’s Mitsui and the Netherlands’ VDL Groep since 2023. It raised a $57 million round from NIIF India-Japan Fund. It has a manufacturing capacity of 6,000 electric buses annually.
PMI Electro Mobility, founded in 2017 by Satish Jain and Anurag Aggarwal, has a 3,000-unit annual capacity plant in Dharuhera, Haryana, and is building a second plant in Neemrana with a capacity to make 15,000 buses. In March, US-based investment firm KKR announced that it will invest $310 million into the company.
Electric bus sales in the country are gaining momentum, with 5,356 units sold in the financial year 2026, 39% higher than in FY25. According to Vahan portal data, JBM Auto led the charts selling 1,260 units, closely folowed by Ashok Leyland’s Switch Mobility that sold 1,163 buses. PMI Electro Mobility sold 1,147 units while Hyderabad-based Olectra saw sales of 1,078 buses.
Eka Mobility sold 375 electric bus in FY26, while Tata Motors came sixth with 184 e-bus registrations. As companies win more orders in tenders, the number of registrations increases gradually once deliveries start.
Earlier, Tata Motors and Ashok Leyland have warned that pricing in the tenders are worrying and they will choose to be cautious instead of getting into aggressive price wars.
“We now run more than 3,600 buses. We have around a cumulative 47-48 crore kilometres of experience under the belt. And therefore, we know what it means to run this business for over 12 years because this is not about a 1-2 year game. It is a 12-year game,” Girish Wagh, managing director and chief executive of Tata Motors, told Mint earlier on questions about the company’s strategy for the electric bus space.
Demand for electric buses is expected to increase amid the ongoing West Asia war, with the government rushing to cut consumption of petrol and diesel and shift towards electric mobility.
