India’s mixed-fuel transition will only work if fuel retail shifts from fragmented silos to a software-defined, intelligent mobility ecosystem.
21 Dec 2025 | 7063 Views | By Vaibhav Kaushik, Nawgati
For years, fuel retail in India has been defined by physical infrastructure, such as dispensers, tanks, meters, pipelines, and traditional, manual processes. But as mobility evolves faster than ever before, we’re entering an era where hardware alone is no longer enough. The next wave of disruption will come from software ...
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For years, fuel retail in India has been defined by physical infrastructure, such as dispensers, tanks, meters, pipelines, and traditional, manual processes. But as mobility evolves faster than ever before, we’re entering an era where hardware alone is no longer enough. The next wave of disruption will come from software systems intelligent enough to manage demand, predict supply, integrate across fuel types, and create a consistent experience for consumers, no matter what vehicle they drive.
India is heading toward a future in which petrol, diesel, EV charging, CNG, hydrogen, LNG, and biofuels will coexist for at least the next 15–20 years. This mixed-fuel environment is the transition period, which has introduced complexity. Today, every fuel type operates in its own silo, with fuel pumps divided between EV charging stations, petrol/diesel dispensers and separate stations for CNG filling. If we continue down this path, the future will look even more fragmented.
The only practical way to build a unified mobility experience in such a diverse ecosystem is to turn fuel retail into a software-defined industry, one where intelligent systems sit at the centre, and infrastructure responds to it.
Globally, digital transformation in fuel retail is still playing catch-up. 90% of the retail operators spend an enormous amount of effort feeding data manually into the computers, navigating siloed systems, and dealing with uncertainty across their distribution networks. Meanwhile, consumer expectations are shifting from fuel-as-a-commodity to fueling as a service. The users want clarity, predictability, and the ability to make informed decisions on the go, and the need for a seamless digital experience is slowly but gradually becoming non-negotiable.
For example, at Bharat Petroleum stations, users can now make a payment in advance via QR code, fill up their tanks, and leave the station, and receive the balance refunded to their source account within 5 mins of fueling up. This payment method has been reducing long queues at BP fuel stations, as users are confident of their payments and refunds.
In India, we’ve been witnessing such promising indicators, such as real-time dashboards for EV charging availability, data-enabled CNG station management pilots, app-based payments, and increasing digitisation of station operations. These efforts, however, are still scattered, and there is still a missing link that could bring everything together. The future should feel like a single, frictionless mobility experience, whether topping up petrol, booking an EV charging slot, or refueling with hydrogen.
Each fuel type, EV charging, CNG, hydrogen, and petrol/diesel, comes with its own operations, its own hardware vendors, its own apps, and its own data formats. EV users today often juggle five different apps just to find an available charger. CNG stations operate mainly in the dark, with no real-time visibility for drivers. Fuel pumps rely on disconnected POS systems that don’t communicate with OEMs or payment networks. This is what happens when every operator builds closed technology stacks: they become isolated fuel islands.
As these systems and stations don’t speak to one another, consumers are forced to navigate multiple platforms just to move from point A to point B, and have to experience discomfort while wasting time on roading and adding to congestion and pollution.
Open APIs can prevent this. They allow stations, vehicles, apps, regulators, and financial systems to exchange information instantly and securely. They create shared digital rails that any operator can plug into. With these rails in place, adding a new fuel type wouldn’t mean starting from scratch. It would simply become another node in the network.
Countries like the U.K. and Norway are already pushing interoperability for chargers and fueling networks. India has even more to gain by adopting standardised digital frameworks early. We’ve already shown the world what’s possible with UPI. A similar model for energy access, open, fair, transparent, could unlock unprecedented scale and efficiency.
When APIs become standard, the user journey becomes effortless: the vehicle predicts needs, stations prepare ahead of time, payment happens without friction, and the entire experience becomes predictable instead of reactive.
That’s the future India should aim for.
Software-defined fuel retail can only work if the physical and digital layers complement each other. As India transitions to a multi-energy landscape, several types of smart infrastructure will become essential. For example:
The vision is bold, but the changing demographics of our country demonstrate the appetite for technological change. India already fuels over 400 million vehicles, and its EV adoption is growing at over 45% YoY, as per the report by the International Energy Agency. However, one friction point remains: the maturity of API ecosystems among fuel retail providers and mobility startups.
India’s mobility sector is still in a phase where many startups are building closed systems because interoperability feels like a threat rather than an accelerator. Open APIs require collaboration, shared standards, and a willingness to let go of control in exchange for scale and network effects.
But history has shown us what open rails can do, as in the case of UPI, which is now a trillion-dollar example.
If we succeed in building open fueling APIs, India could become the world’s blueprint for energy-agnostic mobility.
India’s mobility ecosystem is standing at a defining moment. With our population, growing vehicle base, and accelerating shift to multi-fuel adoption, the country cannot afford a fragmented energy future.
Software-defined fuel retail isn’t about replacing hardware; it’s about elevating it. It’s about giving operators the intelligence they need, giving consumers the clarity they deserve, and giving the nation the infrastructure it requires to transition smoothly into a multi-energy world.
If we embrace open APIs, interoperable systems, and smart infrastructure today, we’ll build more than a modern fueling network; we’ll build the digital backbone of India’s next decade of mobility.
A future where the energy you choose matters less than the experience you have accessing it. A future where energy is not just supplied, but orchestrated. A future where India leads not by copying global standards, but by defining them.
Vaibhav Kaushik is Co-founder and CEO of Nawgati. Views expressed are the author's personal.