Ex-consultant Amit Saharia is leveraging the Hinduja Group’s reach and financial muscle to create a coherent, future-ready EV ecosystem spanning automobiles, energy, finance and technology.
22 Nov 2025 | 7550 Views | By Shahkar Abidi
For a conglomerate built on a century of industrial and financial legacy, stability often becomes a weight rather than an asset. This was the central challenge facing the Hinduja Group, whose extensive roots stretch across India’s corporate landscape. Its portfolio, complexly spanning automotive manufacturing, financial services, energy, and technology, demanded ...
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For a conglomerate built on a century of industrial and financial legacy, stability often becomes a weight rather than an asset. This was the central challenge facing the Hinduja Group, whose extensive roots stretch across India’s corporate landscape. Its portfolio, complexly spanning automotive manufacturing, financial services, energy, and technology, demanded not just incremental growth, but a structural reinvention. The answer to the promoters’ existential question, “What else should we do?” was forged by embracing an integrated vision for the new-age automotive future.
The strategic blueprint for this profound transformation is known internally as project "e-merge".
According to Amit Saharia, Group President (Strategy), the mandate is clear: bring coherence to the group’s disparate parts and architect its future growth.
This horizontal thinking was crucial for Hinduja’s marquee brands, particularly, Ashok Leyland. As India’s second-largest commercial vehicle (CV) maker, the world’s fourth-largest bus manufacturer, and the nineteenth-largest truck maker, the $4.5 billion flagship was facing immense pressure to evolve beyond its dependency on diesel engines.
Starting in 2019, Hinduja Group began steering the leadership toward alternate mobility futures, specifically electric vehicles (EVs) and digital services. Initially, this was a difficult proposition; traditional business leaders were skeptical, and EVs were still peripheral to India’s mobility plans.
However, the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic acted not as a disruption, but as a strategic accelerator. As global operations froze, virtual boardrooms became the crucible for intense strategy calls. The company's leadership team used data and global benchmarks, specifically highlighting trends emerging from major markets like the US and China, to chart out a transition that was an inevitabile, and not merely an experiment. "If you are on that growth curve," Saharia explained, "sooner or later you will arrive there".
Birth of Project e-marge
Out of this period of alignment, Project "e-merge" was formalized. The “E” was designed to symbolize more than just “Electric, encompassing a broader electronic and digital mandate across the group’s core business verticals: mobility, energy, digital, and finance.
The ambition underpinning this strategic blueprint is vast. The Hinduja Group has set a goal to achieve $100 Billion in market capitalization for its core businesses by 2030, a threefold increase from its current valuation. Nearly half of this is expected from the financial services cluster, with another $25-30 Billion expected from the automotive cluster.
Weaving the Ecosystem
Achieving this required reimagining the Group's automotive and other operations not merely as an asset-heavy manufacturing model, but as an integrated, asset-light ecosystem.
The transformation began with electrification, spearheaded by Switch Mobility, launched in late 2020 and early 2021. Switch is the group’s dedicated entity for electrification, focused on electric buses and electric light commercial vehicles (e-LCVs). Since its inception, the company has deployed over 1,250 electric buses globally, covering more than 150 million kilometres, and has rolled out over 1,000 units of its IeV Series e-LCVs.
Crucially, the transformation recognised that building an EV required more than just building the vehicle. One of the most significant barriers to EV adoption in the commercial vehicle market is the high upfront capital cost. To circumvent this, the Group launched Ohm Mobility, an entity designed to hold the vehicle assets on its books.
This structure allows Ohm to offer ‘mobility-as-a-service’ on a ‘pay-per-kilometre’ basis, turning a large capital expenditure into a manageable operating cost for fleet owners. Currently, Switch Mobility has been operating the e-buses contracts with several state transport corporations, with financial leaning on Ohm Mobility.
This asset-light approach was complemented by expanding the mobility presence into logistics and digital freight orchestration through 'Gro'. Gro functions as a digital exchange, linking shippers directly to fleet owners. Providing the necessary capital spine is*Hinduja Leyland Finance (HLFL), which offers tailored financing and leasing solutions to support the broader uptake.
Mobility could not transform in a vacuum; electrification demands an equally robust energy infrastructure. To address this parallel need, Hinduja Renewables was established as a critical growth pillar. The group is pushing its way into the renewable sector.
Hinduja Renewables currently manages a diversified portfolio of 3GW (commissioned and under construction) and aims to scale this capacity to 10GW by 2030, covering solar, hybrid, and battery storage segments. This expansion will entail significant investment, approximately $3-4 Billion over the next five to six years, the company's top leadership noted.
Even the traditional businesses are recalibrating. Gulf Oil India, the country’s second-largest private lubricant maker, faced the existential threat posed by the EV wave, which reduces the demand for traditional automotive lubricants. Instead of retreating, Gulf Oil adapted.
Leveraging its strong foundation, which includes over 40 partnerships with original vehicle manufacturers and exports to 25 countries, the company pivoted into the necessary sphere of EV charging infrastructure. These efforts involved the acquisition of India’s Tirex Transmission for DC fast chargers and the UK-based Indra for developing integrated AC charging and software-led charging platforms. Gulf’s rapid drive toward 55% localization, focusing on critical hardware and cables ,is designed to ensure price competitiveness in a sector where margins are currently thin but scale is imminent.
Control of the Supply Chain and Digital Spine
To secure the fundamental components of the EV supply chain, the Hinduja Group also moved upstream. A crucial partnership was forged with CALB, China’s leading cell manufacturer, guaranteeing stable technology access and cell supply. The first phase of this partnership, involving an investment of approximately Rs 500 crore over the next 18 months, focuses on locally assembling lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery packs.
A much larger, second phase is envisioned, ranging up to Rs 5,000 crore to Rs 10,000 crore over the decade, aimed at moving cell manufacturing onshore, pending local demand dynamics and assessment of optimal plant sites based on incentives and energy costs. Operations for the initial phase are targeted to commence within 12–18 months.
Threading all these verticals together is Hinduja Tech, the group’s technology and research and development powerhouse. Headquartered in Chennai, the company employs more than 2,300 engineers globally, serving over 100 vehicle manufacturers and key component providers.
It provides end-to-end engineering across propulsion, electronics, body design and simulation, using its proprietary 'Frugal 7S' model to accelerate innovation while managing costs. Recent integrations, such as the acquisition of UK-based Drive System Design and Germany’s TECOSIM, have bolstered its capabilities in powertrain architecture and virtual simulation, positioning Hinduja Tech as the digital backbone supporting the entire group’s transition from mechanical manufacturing to software-enabled, digitally engineered mobility.
What's next?
At the system level, project e-merge is the unifying strategic horizon for the Hinduja Group’s Vision 2030. Saharia notes, "The next critical phase involves stabilization". The asset-light extensions with Ohm, Gro, and the forthcoming battery venture must evolve from pilot-scale initiatives into self-sustaining, measurable businesses, he explained before signing off.