Green Tiger Mobility: Bajaj-Backed EV Retrofit Startup
17 Jul 2026
Bengaluru-based Green Tiger Mobility is taking a different route to India's EV transition — not by building new electric two-wheelers, but by converting the petrol ones already on the road. With backing from Bajaj Motors and a handful of other investors, the startup is betting that retrofitting could be a faster, cheaper path to electrification than waiting for fleet turnover.
The pitch: retrofit, don't replace
India has an estimated 250 to 300 million petrol two-wheelers on its roads — a fleet size that dwarfs annual new-vehicle sales. Green Tiger's thesis is that converting even a fraction of these existing scooters into EVs could move the needle on emissions faster than new EV sales alone.
Formally incorporated on October 27, 2020, by founding directors Ashish Dokania and Swati Keshan Dokania, the company came up through NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore's startup incubator. Its retrofit center in Bommanahalli runs scooters through a 130-parameter diagnostic process before conversion. According to the company, retrofitted vehicles have collectively covered more than 1.5 lakh km on Indian roads.
The technology is ARAI-approved and covered by six approved patents on retrofit and power electronics, which the company points to as a defensible IP and regulatory position in a still-nascent category.
Funding: patient capital over one big raise
Green Tiger's funding history reflects a multi-year, staged approach rather than a single large round:
- January 2022: Rs 5 crore angel and overseas round
- 2022: Won FICCI's 'Most Promising Innovation' award
- 2023: Rs 11 crore round with Bajaj Motors, Faad Capital, and Indus Capital
- 2024: PM Narendra Modi stopped by the company's booth at the Bharat Mobility Expo
- August 2024: Scaled up full operations
Across five rounds, the company has raised $1.95 million in equity, with Rs 21 crore in total funding when grants are included. The report notes it's unclear exactly how the $1.95 million equity figure and the Rs 21 crore total reconcile in currency terms or timing — a detail the company hasn't clarified publicly.
Bajaj Motors' involvement is notable beyond capital: Vikas Bajaj sits on Green Tiger's board as a nominee director, suggesting an active, not just financial, relationship with an established two-wheeler manufacturer.
Where things stand today
Since scaling up operations in August 2024, Green Tiger has completed roughly 600 retrofits with a team of just 20-24 people, generating Rs 4.6 crore in revenue in FY25. That's a small operation relative to the scale of the market it's targeting, and the report doesn't clarify what percentage of the 250-300 million vehicle market the company aims to address or has capacity for currently.
Other gaps in the public picture: there's no disclosed retrofit cost per scooter or customer pricing model, no data on profitability or margins, and no detail on customer acquisition channels or average turnaround time per conversion.
Why founders should care
For early-stage founders — particularly in hardware, mobility, or climate tech — Green Tiger's trajectory offers a few probabilistic signals worth weighing:
- Blended capital may be a realistic path for hardware startups. The mix of equity rounds and government-linked grants suggests founders building capital-intensive, infrastructure-heavy products may need to combine private and public funding sources rather than relying on venture capital alone.
- Regulatory approval and patents before scale could be a deliberate sequencing strategy. Green Tiger secured ARAI approval and six patents ahead of its 2024 scale-up, which may indicate that building defensibility early is more valuable than rushing to market in regulated hardware categories — though ARAI approval in one market doesn't guarantee smooth acceptance across all Indian states.
- Small teams can plausibly move real volume. A 20-24 person team completing ~600 retrofits hints at capital-efficient operations, though this isn't confirmed by any margin or unit economics data, so founders shouldn't over-index on this as proof of a scalable model yet.
- Strategic investor backing can signal validation, but isn't a guarantee of scale. Bajaj Motors' investment and board seat likely reflect industry interest in the retrofit approach, but scaling to meaningfully address a 250-300 million vehicle market probably requires significantly more capital and infrastructure than current funding levels suggest.
- Staged fundraising over one-time raises may be the norm, not the exception, for hardware retrofit plays. Green Tiger's five rounds over roughly four years point to a pattern founders in similar spaces may need to plan for: patient, incremental capital rather than a single large war chest.
The bottom line
Green Tiger Mobility has assembled the ingredients — regulatory approval, patents, a strategic investor, and public visibility — that often precede a scale-up story. But with revenue still in the low crores and a market measured in hundreds of millions of vehicles, the company's next phase will likely test whether retrofit economics can work at a scale large enough to matter.