In February 2023, River Mobility released its first scooter, the first-generation Indie. By January 2026, with a quarter lakh Indie scooters on the road, River was the seventh largest EV scooter brand by sales.
Aravind Mani, the CEO of River, sat down with THE WEEK at their headquarters in Bengaluru to provide us with some insights into their rapid ascent to the top 10, and the EV industry, in general. Here are some excerpts from the interview...
Q: In January 2026, you are the seventh biggest EV scooter player in India. What are your projections for the next 2-3 years?
Aravind Mani: We want to grow from the current 3,000 vehicles a month that we are selling to around 15,000 units in the next 2 to 3 years. That is the target that we are working on.
We’ll close this financial year with around ₹400 crore. Last [financial] year, it was around ₹100 crore. This fiscal year, we’ve grown around 4x. Now, you can extrapolate the math. But it’s fundamentally the number of vehicles that are our target.
Q: River currently has only one product, the River Indie. And, now the Yamaha EC06 is also being made at your facility? When is the next product from River Mobility coming out?
Aravind Mani: Indie has just reached 3,000 vehicles a month, and our dealerships are present only in around 33 cities today. We need to reach across the country first. We need to give River Indie the opportunity to reach a certain volume and to all the important markets around the country. We’ll possibly work to launch the next product only after we have around 150 outlets, which will possibly take another year or more.
Q: In your projections, you said you are going to expand more into the west, north, northwest, and northeast of the country. Is your focus primarily more to the south, given that the factory and the HQ are in and around Bengaluru? Was it planned that you’ll do the south first?
Aravind Mani: Yeah, for a couple of reasons. One, the market is here. The South is a slightly larger scooter market and EV market than the rest of the country. For example, Bengaluru as a city alone sells around 8,500 vehicles out of the 1.20–1.25 lakh vehicles that India sells every year. Karnataka sells roughly around 15,000–16,000. So, South is a large market. That is one reason.
The second reason is that we wanted to make sure that it is in our close vicinity that the stores are coming up in the beginning, so that we can provide the best service possible. Last year, we opened a zonal office in Delhi. Now, we have teams sit out of there so that we can fuel the north expansion. It’s a step-by-step process. It was, indeed, a deliberate decision.
Q: Where do you see the general EV scooter market heading to? You mentioned you are not taking part in the race, but you are slowly, cruising. Why take it slow?
Aravind Mani: I believe most of the electrification happening in India is on scooters today, which is typically a city use case—people rarely use a scooter to go from one city to another. And the typical use case of a scooter is around 20–30 km a day. So, range anxiety is not a real problem. The cost of operations is much lower compared to a petrol scooter. All of these are reasons that are driving electrification.
One in every five scooters sold in India is electric today, which is a significant number. In scooters, the penetration of electric is close to 20 per cent. Overall, in two-wheelers, if you look at the penetration, it is around 7 per cent. But scooter penetration is very encouraged and that market will continue to grow. We see that market growing. From last year to this year, possibly we grew 20–25 per cent, and that level of growth will continue to happen in the electric vehicle space. That is what we believe will happen in the e-2-wheeler (E2W) industry. Motorcycles might take a lot more time to get electrified because they are also long-distance commuters.
Q: You mentioned you are not taking part in the race, but you are slowly cruising. Why take it slow?
Aravind Mani: I think we are practical about it. We reached this position in a span of five years, and the top one, two companies have all been around for the last 30–40 years. So I don’t think we’ll be able to do what they did in 30 years at this point in time because they have the manufacturing muscle, they have distribution, etc. It’ll take us time, and this is a business that will take time to scale. So, we are aggressive in our own way in terms of the targets that we set, but we make sure that we also achieve those targets.
We have a first 7-year plan for River, which is until March 2028, where we want to be present in at least all the states around the country. That, for us, is around 300–350 stores. Today, we have 45 [stores as of February]... We’ll have around 200 by 2027 and 350 by 2028. That’s a reasonably aggressive target for us because we also have to maintain the store and service quality as we scale. We have absolutely zero compromise on quality as we scale. This will make sure that we are a reasonable player in the space, and our priority is to become profitable at that scale. We’re profitable at that scale. We also do not depend on external capital beyond that point, and the company becomes self-sustainable, and that for us is a very good outcome in the first seven years.
Q: Many say you took a gamble with "SUV of scooters" tagline for Indie, especially in an Indian market that stresses on range and aesthetic. Do you not think that your focus on "the pickup truck of scooters" and the utility-first positioning will have an impact on sales? Is that something that you’re factoring in?
Aravind Mani: It’s more of a conviction than gamble, and the proof of conviction that we have is 25,000 scooters on the road today. As a brand, we need to stand out, stand apart, and we need to have differentiation in the positioning that we do. Every brand needs that. If you talk about any brand in the market today—even the existing, incumbent two-wheeler brands—there is a certain perception that customers have. Currently, there is no brand which is focused on utility-lifestyle as a segment in India. We are the first ones to create it, and we believe that this is a significantly large market because two-wheelers are also primarily used for utilitarian purposes. We are targeting the solo-entrepreneur community in India who are educated and want to start their own business. They use the two-wheelers to go from point A to point B, and our entire mission is to help them get more out of every commute. If they are able to get more out of every commute, their day gets better, their life gets better, and it also contributes to the livelihood in some way, which is fundamentally the entire mission behind River. And that is what we will stick to, and that’s a conviction more than a gamble.
Q: Apart from EV motors and batteries, another major component is the brain of the EV—the motor controller. Are you moving towards making your own motor controllers?
Aravind Mani: Controllers do not have magnets; they are still electronic. Today we have one vendor with whom we have kind of scaled the entire manufacturing of motor and motor controller. So we want to continue and scale with this, but there is a long-term plan to have the electronics integrated in-house, but that’s very far away—it’s not anytime close.
Q: With the Centre pushing for the Critical Minerals Mission, will that help River make rare-earth magnets in-house?
Aravind Mani: We will not possibly get into manufacturing that. We’ll stick to what we are good at because we are good at designing automotives, we have enough work cut out in manufacturing of the automotive, scaling up distribution, and making sure that we are able to service at that large scale. So this is enough work cut out for us; we’ll rather stick to what we are good at.
Q: Your HQ is in Bengaluru, and manufacturing is nearby, at Hoskote. As you scale, how are you tackling supply chain concerns, especially since you have to cater to the entirety of India? Are you planning to localise more?
Aravind Mani: We are already localised for everything, except for cells. Everything else comes from India only. There is nothing that is coming from outside except for cells. Cells, we currently don’t make at scale in India. There are manufacturers trying to get cell manufacturing at scale, and we hope that we’ll be able to buy cells from India in the next few years.
Q: River has also attracted international investment in the EV scooter market. Are Indian investors not big enough? Or was it a completely different direction you went to with the international investors?
Aravind Mani: Early stage, it’s difficult to get [investors in India] because there aren’t many VCs in India who are focused on hardware startups. What happened with us was that when we went to raise the first round of capital, we told them: ‘You please give us the money now and we’ll possibly sell the vehicle in 25 months' time, which is after 2 years.’ Most Indian early-stage investors were not used to that kind of waiting time. In hardware investing, the gestation time is longer; it involves manufacturing, it involves technology, and businesses are complex, but in the growth stage, there are enough investors in India. Once you have a business built out of it, then you have enough [investors].
Q: So far, how much have you raised and where have you allocated these funds?
Aravind Mani: We have raised around $70 million so far and that’s around just shy of Rs 600 crore. We have invested that in the R&D facilities, the product platform, the technology, factory, everything.
Q: Moving forward, business-wise... River completed its first five years in March 2026. What about the next five years?
Aravind Mani: I don’t have a plan for the next five years [but] I’ll give you a plan for the next two years... We want to increase the distribution to 200-300 outlets, maybe launch one more product, and increase the sales from 3,000 to 15,000 [a month]. It’s as simple as that; nothing else.