NEW DELHI: India is using electric buses (e-buses) as a new instrument of regional and Global South diplomacy, leveraging its growing clean mobility expertise to strengthen ties with neighbours such as Bhutan and Nepal, as well as Mauritius, according to six people aware of the development, including strategic and green mobility experts.
While Bhutan is set to receive 45 e-buses from Hinduja Group’s Switch Mobility, state-run Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL) has floated a tender to supply 20 e-buses and 10 chargers to Nepal. Also, Mauritius has already received 100 e-buses through a government-to-government contract.
“India’s external affairs ministry has taken charge of deployments in foreign countries in previous tenders to the Maldives, Mauritius, and Nepal, with other line ministries assisting. These tenders for supplying e-buses build essential strategic relationships in foreign countries,” said one of the persons cited above, requesting anonymity.
This comes against the backdrop of India retaining its spot as the world’s third-largest for the second consecutive year in FY26, backed largely by big-ticket tenders under central government schemes such as the ₹4,391-crore PM E-Drive and the ₹20,000-crore PM E-Bus Sewa.
“India’s electric bus exports and cross-border deployments are gaining momentum, and Bhutan represents another important opportunity. Switch Mobility has signed a contract with Bhutan’s Department of Surface Transport for the supply of 45 electric buses under the Government of India-supported ‘Accelerating E-mobility Uptake in Bhutan’ initiative, with deliveries scheduled over the coming months by us,” Switch Mobility chief executive Ganesh Mani said in an emailed response.
In May, New Delhi-based Asian Institute of Transport Development (AITD) conducted six specialised training programmes exclusively for about 100 Bhutanese officials. This included training on operation of electric buses that the Himalayan nation is procuring under a project funded by India, according to B.N. Puri, director, AITD.
“The programmes covered public transport, road safety and vehicle roadworthiness. The programmes also covered e-bus operations, as the electric buses are expected to be operational by late 2026 in Bhutan,” said Puri.
This green mobility outreach pitches India vis-a-vis China, which has overwhelming dominance in the global electric-bus market. In FY26, India exported 132 e-buses, of which Mauritius accounted for 100 units, followed by Tanzania (15) and Indonesia (8), according to commerce ministry data.
Switch Mobility was the supplier of the 100 e-buses to Mauritius in FY26, for which a tender was floated by state run Convergence Energy Services Limited (CESL) in 2024.
CESL has successfully floated tenders for more than 6,200 electric buses, including a 3,604-bus tender under the PM e-Bus Sewa scheme that is set to close in July. Administered by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), the PM e-Bus Sewa scheme aims to deploy 10,000 electric buses across 116 tier-II and tier-III cities in India. Also, the PM E-Drive scheme plans to deploy 14,028 e-buses in nine metropolitan cities with populations above 4 million.
India’s clean mobility assistance is not limited to Bhutan and Mauritius. CESL also floated a tender in July 2025 for supplying 20 e-buses and 10 e-bus chargers to Nepal, according to publicly available tender documents.
Experts say this is India’s move to leverage electric buses as a part of the country’s ‘neighbourhood first’ foreign policy. “These countries are part of India’s maritime neighbourhood. India has been extending assistance to these countries. Indian assistance has helped in tiding over the crisis and contributed to their developmental trajectory…,” said Sankalp Gurjar, professor of geopolitics at Pune’s Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE).
“There is a need to evolve policies for electric mobility in the Global South. A substantial push towards increasing adoption of heavy commercial electric vehicles entails strong supply-side regulations. Policy clarity offers market certainty, improving investment in the sector. This needs to go hand-in-hand with resilient supply chain planning,” said Sharvari Patki, program director of electric mobility and Global South partnerships at WRI India, a New Delhi-based climate and sustainability think-tank.
India’s domestic electric bus sales rose 37% to 5,356 units in FY26, the government’s Vahan portal for vehicle registrations showed. As electric buses cost 2-2.5x the cost of diesel buses in India, adoption has been largely driven by government contracts for building new fleets in small towns where formalised public transport does not exist, or revamping existing fleets for intracity transport in major metro cities, said the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its Global EV Outlook 2026 published in May.
Queries emailed to the India’s ministries of external affairs and heavy industries, CESL, the embassies of China, Bhutan, Nepal, Mauritius, Maldives, Indonesia, and Tanzania in New Delhi on 11 June remained unanswered till press time.
Pune-based EKA Mobility, which recently won considerable orders for electric buses in various Indian cities under government tenders, said the company is planning to expand its export footprint.
“ is actively pursuing international opportunities, with our buses already deployed across various African regions. However, we are evaluating opportunities across several emerging markets. Beyond exports, we are also in the process of establishing electric bus manufacturing and assembly operations in Australia and Africa,” said Vijay Yelne, president-export marketing & SCM at EKA Mobility.
