Creatara Mobility, founded in 2018 within the IIT Delhi innovation ecosystem, is preparing to widen commercial availability of its electric two-wheelers after an eight-year journey marked by ground-up product development, funding and supplier challenges, the Covid-19 pandemic and the process of taking its vehicles through validation and certification.
The electric two-wheeler startup currently has two products, the IN40 and VS4, and says it is targeting wider commercial availability in Q4 FY2026. It has established an in-house manufacturing facility in Faridabad and a head office in Okhla, New Delhi, while its R&D and production team has grown to more than 30 people.
The timeline, however, has been considerably longer than that of several electric two-wheeler startups that emerged around the same period and moved into commercial production earlier. Vikas Gupta, founder and CEO of Creatara Mobility, attributes this partly to the company’s decision to develop its vehicles from the ground up rather than follow a CKD-led assembly model.
“There is an important distinction I would draw between us and CKD assemblers. We chose to build a product from scratch, from the ground up, with no existing vendor base or proven technology to lean on,” Gupta said.
According to him, developing a prototype and taking a vehicle to automotive-grade mass production presented different challenges, particularly for a startup attempting to establish its component and supplier ecosystem simultaneously.
“Taking a vehicle to automotive-grade mass production means working closely with vendors to develop entirely new architecture, and that simply takes time,” he said.
Supplier Scale and Funding Posed Challenges
One of the challenges Creatara encountered was convincing established component manufacturers to work with a company whose initial volumes were relatively small.
Gupta said larger suppliers were understandably reluctant to engage with a startup at low volumes, particularly at a time when the survival prospects of new electric two-wheeler companies remained uncertain. Creatara was consequently developing not only the vehicle but also the supplier relationships required to industrialise it.
Funding presented another constraint. Automotive hardware requires significant capital before a company can begin generating revenue, with expenditure required across product design, engineering, manufacturing, supply-chain development and certification.
“This is a deeply capital-intensive business. Long before a product launches, investors expect every box checked — design, development, manufacturing, supply chain, certification — and the risk appetite for backing hardware at that pre-revenue stage is low,” Gupta said.
He argues that this funding gap is not specific to Creatara and has contributed to the failure of other automotive startups attempting to bring hardware products to market.
Creatara began as a bootstrapped venture and subsequently received institutional and government support. According to the company, the Department of Science and Technology backed it during its early development, while the Ministry of Heavy Industries provided a ₹3.9 crore grant towards technology validation. The company also received technology-development support from Sona Comstar.
The Covid-19 pandemic added to the development timeline. Gupta estimates that two years were effectively consumed by the pandemic, a particularly difficult period for a hardware company operating with a lean team and without large-scale funding.
“We could have taken shortcuts at several points, but thanks to mentors on our board such as Mr. I. V. Rao (Former R&D Head Maruti) and the late Mr. Sunjay Kapoor (Chairman, Sona Group), we never skipped a step,” Gupta said.
He maintains that Creatara’s timeline should therefore be viewed in the context of the automotive development cycle rather than simply the time elapsed since the company’s incorporation.
“Coming from the automotive industry myself, I know that respecting the development cycle of any product is non-negotiable,” he said.
In-House Technology and Electronics
Creatara says it has developed proprietary technology and electronics as part of its effort to differentiate its products in an increasingly crowded electric two-wheeler market.
“We own the design and we own the patents,” Gupta said, adding that primary consumer research has influenced the company’s R&D priorities and the electronics architecture it develops in-house. The company believes product design and technology adoption will increasingly influence purchase decisions as electric two-wheeler customers become more familiar with the category.
Rather than positioning its products strictly against either existing electric scooters or motorcycles, Creatara says it intends to develop a segment that can appeal to riders from both categories.
The company also plans to look beyond India after establishing its products domestically. Gupta said Creatara intends to first prove its products in the Indian market before pursuing exports and potential collaborations with startups and established companies in overseas markets.
30,000-Unit Annual Production Target
With its vehicles approaching wider commercial availability, the next test for Creatara will be converting its years of product development into production and sales.
The company’s Faridabad facility currently has manufacturing capacity of 100 units per shift. Creatara says it has close to 200 sales and distribution partners supporting its products and plans to expand its market presence across India.
Over the next three years, the company is targeting a minimum annual production of 30,000 units. Gupta said the company intends to scale capacity in line with demand and funding rather than install capacity significantly ahead of either.
“We are scaling deliberately, in step with demand and funding, rather than racing ahead of either,” he said.
The target comes as India’s electric two-wheeler market is attracting both established manufacturers and startups, increasing the competitive pressure on newer entrants. Creatara will therefore enter commercial scale at a point when customers have considerably more electric two-wheeler choices than they did when the company was founded in 2018.
Gupta nevertheless believes there remains room for additional manufacturers and says Creatara’s longer-term ambition is to become one of India’s top three electric two-wheeler brands by 2030.
That ambition is considerably larger than its stated near-term production target. Creatara has said it aims for minimum annual production of 30,000 units over the next three years, but the interview does not provide a longer-term volume, market-share or capacity roadmap showing how the company expects to translate that scale into a top-three position.
For Creatara, the immediate challenge is consequently more straightforward: after spending eight years developing the company, its technology, supplier ecosystem and manufacturing operation, it now has to demonstrate how those investments translate into vehicles reaching customers at scale.