Startup Deep Dive : Altigreen Propulsion Labs — Built its own EV powertrain, still couldn’t outrun a cash crunch

Altigreen Propulsion Labs raised Rs 300 crore in February 2022 from Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance New Energy and Sixth Sense Ventures, built one of India’s more technically ambitious electric three-wheelers, and put 5,000 of them on the road across 120 cities. Three years later the Bengaluru company was losing more than twice what it earned: Rs 242.5 crore against Rs 119 crore of revenue in FY24, a loss that grew 209% in a single year even as sales rose only 25% (Inc42, June 2025).

Its founder, Amitabh Saran, had spent 28 years at NASA, Hewlett-Packard and two of his own startups before deciding that India’s air-pollution toll was, in his words, a problem everyone complained about and no one owned. Altigreen built its own motors, controllers, battery packs and software rather than buying them in, won 32 patents across 60 countries, and still could not close a follow-on funding round, keep its factory running, or pay its own staff on time through 2024 and 2025. This is the story of a company where the engineering worked and the money did not follow.

Quick facts

What they do

Altigreen designs and builds electric three-wheelers for India’s last-mile economy: cargo variants (the neEV, neEV Bhai and fast-charging neEV Tez) aimed at delivery fleets, e-commerce logistics operators and small transport businesses, and a passenger autorickshaw, the neEV Rahi, for individual drivers and fleet operators. Unlike many Indian EV three-wheeler makers that buy motors, controllers and battery packs from outside suppliers and bolt them onto a chassis, Altigreen designs and manufactures its own motors, motor controllers, battery management systems, lithium-ion battery packs and vehicle software at a roughly 3-lakh-square-foot factory in Malur, Karnataka, selling through about 20 dealerships across the country (EVreporter, company profile).

The origin

Saran did not come to electric vehicles by way of the auto industry. He trained as a computer scientist, earned a PhD from UC Santa Barbara, and spent nearly three decades moving through NASA as a project manager, Hewlett-Packard as a chief architect, and two startups of his own, including Buzzintown.com, which was later acquired by Yatra.com. By his own account, the idea for Altigreen came out of an ordinary conversation about why India still had no affordable path to cleaner transport: hybrids like the Toyota Prius were priced near Rs 29 lakh, far beyond the reach of the delivery riders and auto drivers who actually needed a cheaper-to-run vehicle, while the country’s air was killing an estimated 1.2 million people a year by his telling of it. He has described an “epitaph moment” from his HP years, a private reckoning with what he wanted his career to have stood for, as the nudge that turned a complaint into a company (Founder Thesis interview, accessed September 2026).

He founded Altigreen in Bengaluru in 2013. The company spent its first years working on electric and hybrid drivetrains for a range of vehicle types rather than selling a badge of its own, before converting itself into a vehicle manufacturer in its own right and shipping its first own-brand electric three-wheeler in 2021 (Inc42 company profile; EVreporter, company profile). That is an unusually long runway for a hardware startup: eight years of engineering before the first commercial sale.

The struggle years

The Series A funding in February 2022 arrived with real momentum behind it: the company later described having 5,000 Altigreen three-wheelers running in more than 120 cities and towns (Inc42, June 2025, quoting the company). What followed was not a straight climb. Through 2023, dealers told reporters that a majority of Altigreen vehicles ran into operational problems within three months of purchase, just as larger legacy two- and three-wheeler makers began rolling out competing electric three-wheelers backed by wider dealer and service networks (Inc42, June 2025).

The company went looking for more capital that same year, targeting roughly $85 million (about Rs 700 crore) at a valuation near $350 million, and its chief executive told Bloomberg News in May 2023 that the round could close by July (DNA India, 29 May 2023; Autocar Professional, 29 May 2023). It did not close. By the end of 2023, Altigreen had laid off around 100 employees and cut its Malur plant back from two shifts to one. Salary cuts followed in early 2024, and by late 2024 the factory was dispatching only 50 to 90 vehicles a month, down from triple-digit monthly numbers a year earlier (Inc42, June 2025). The plant eventually stopped production altogether, and by mid-2025 employees said they had gone without salaries since the start of that year (Inc42, June 2025).

The turning point

The clearest single moment came in March 2025. Altigreen had reportedly been in advanced talks with Hero Motors for an investment of about Rs 900 crore ($103 million), a deal that would have been large enough to refinance the business and restart the Malur line. Instead, Hero Motors announced it was putting Rs 628 crore into a 32.1% stake in a direct rival, Euler Motors (Inc42, June 2025). One number represents what Altigreen needed and had been discussing for months; the other is what its most plausible rescuer actually chose to spend, and it went to a competitor instead. Within three months of that announcement, Altigreen’s own dispatches were down to double digits a month and its staff were unpaid.

The money behind it

Altigreen’s capital history is short on rounds and long on attempts that did not land.

• Series A, February 2022: Rs 300 crore (about $40 million as reported at the time), led by Sixth Sense Ventures, with Reliance New Energy (Mukesh Ambani’s RIL-owned clean-energy arm) contributing about Rs 50.16 crore of the round, alongside Xponentia Capital, Accurant International (US) and Momentum Venture Capital (Singapore) (EVreporter, company profile).
• Cumulative funding raised: reported at roughly $48.8-48.9 million across all rounds to date, including seed-stage capital ahead of the Series A (Tracxn; EVreporter).
• 2023 Series B pitch: sought about Rs 700 crore ($85 million) at a target valuation near $350 million (roughly Rs 2,800-2,900 crore); reported in May 2023, targeted to close by July 2023, and never closed (DNA India; Autocar Professional, both 29 May 2023).
• 2025 Hero Motors talks: discussions for a roughly Rs 900 crore ($103 million) investment collapsed; Hero instead backed rival Euler Motors with Rs 628 crore for a 32.1% stake in March 2025 (Inc42, June 2025).
• Mid-2025 status: the company said it was “in the middle of raising” about $35 million in a fresh Series B with undisclosed investors as of June 2025 — company-stated and unconfirmed by any named backer (Inc42, June 2025).

What each Series A backer added went beyond the cheque: Sixth Sense Ventures led the round and brought consumer and industrial-sector diligence; Reliance New Energy’s participation signalled Ambani-group credibility to an auto industry watching for it; Xponentia Capital, Accurant International and Momentum Venture Capital rounded out the syndicate as financial investors. No named strategic or financial backer has been confirmed in any round since.

How it makes money

Altigreen earns almost all of its revenue from selling complete electric three-wheelers, not from financing, leasing or software.

• Product revenue: cargo variants (neEV, neEV Bhai, neEV Tez) and the passenger neEV Rahi, sold outright to last-mile logistics operators, e-commerce delivery fleets and individual drivers through around 20 dealerships (EVreporter, company profile).
• In-house powertrain: the company designs and builds its own motors, controllers, battery management systems and lithium-ion packs rather than buying them from outside suppliers, an approach it says protects margin as component costs fall over time (EVreporter, company profile).
• Margin claim, company-stated: Altigreen told EVreporter its material margin — sale price minus direct material cost — improved from -3% to +16% between two internal reporting periods, with an internal FY25 target of 26%; this is a company disclosure, not an audited or independently confirmed figure.
• Where the margin was supposed to sit: in-sourcing the powertrain avoids paying a supplier’s markup on the single most expensive part of an EV, and after-sales service and spares to fleet customers were meant to add a second, stickier revenue line.
• What people get wrong: a three-wheeler OEM does not earn like a two-wheeler company at scale. Altigreen’s FY24 accounts show it spending roughly Rs 3 for every Rs 1 of revenue (Rs 242.5 crore of loss against Rs 119 crore of sales), and by late 2024 its Malur plant was dispatching only 50-90 vehicles a month against a factory and R&D cost base sized for far higher volumes (Inc42, June 2025; Tofler MCA filing).

The numbers

Altigreen is a private company that files summarised accounts with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs; only FY24 has been reported in granular rupee terms by business media, with FY23 derivable from the disclosed year-on-year growth rates. Earlier years and FY25 full-year figures are not independently verifiable and have been left out rather than estimated.

• FY24 revenue: Rs 119 crore, up 25% year-on-year (Inc42, June 2025); Tofler’s MCA-sourced filing independently places FY24 operating revenue in the Rs 100-150 crore band with a net profit margin of about -126%, corroborating both the revenue scale and the scale of the loss.
• FY24 net loss: Rs 242.5 crore, up 209% year-on-year (Inc42, June 2025).
• Balance sheet signal: Tofler’s MCA-based estimate puts debt-to-equity at around 3.4x for FY24, consistent with a company that has been financing operating losses with borrowed money rather than fresh equity.

Where the money comes from

Altigreen has not disclosed a formal revenue split by segment or geography, so the picture here is necessarily qualitative rather than a precise breakdown.

• Product mix: cargo three-wheelers (the L5N-category neEV family) have been the company’s primary product line since its first commercial sale in 2021; the L5M passenger neEV Rahi is a newer addition to the range (EVreporter, company profile).
• Customer mix: the company’s own marketing and reporting point to last-mile logistics operators and e-commerce delivery fleets as the primary buyers of its cargo vehicles, alongside individual auto drivers for the passenger variant, sold through roughly 20 dealerships rather than direct-to-consumer (EVreporter, company profile).
• Geography: vehicles have been reported running in more than 120 cities and towns across India, with manufacturing concentrated at a single site in Malur, Karnataka — a geographic footprint that is nationwide in sales but has just one point of production failure (Inc42, June 2025).
• The surprise: for a company that spent eight years building drivetrains and software before it sold a single branded vehicle, Altigreen’s public record contains almost no discussion of licensing or component sales to other manufacturers. All of the disclosed revenue is tied to Altigreen’s own finished vehicles, meaning the years of powertrain engineering have not, on current public disclosure, been monetised as a separate business line.

The risks

• Segment concentration against better-funded rivals: Altigreen depends almost entirely on the electric three-wheeler cargo segment, where competitors such as Euler Motors have since attracted large strategic capital — Hero Motors alone put Rs 628 crore into a 32.1% stake in Euler in March 2025, months after passing on a comparable opportunity with Altigreen (Inc42, June 2025). Better-capitalised rivals can outspend on dealer margins and service networks, which squeezes an already low-volume competitor’s sales further.
• Working-capital and supplier-payment risk: vendors and employees have alleged unpaid dues, and Altigreen’s own monthly dispatches fell from triple digits to 50-90 vehicles by late 2024, a decline that a cash-strapped supply chain can reinforce: unpaid component suppliers slow or stop shipments, which cuts production, which cuts revenue, which leaves less cash to pay suppliers (Inc42, June 2025).
• Repeated failure to close follow-on financing: two funding attempts on the public record — the $85 million Series B target reported in May 2023 and the roughly $35 million round the company said it was pursuing as of June 2025 — had not closed as of their respective reporting dates (DNA India and Autocar Professional, May 2023; Inc42, June 2025). A loss-making manufacturer with an MCA-estimated debt-to-equity ratio near 3.4x has little room left to fund operations from borrowing if equity capital does not arrive.

The takeaway

Altigreen did the part of the electric-vehicle problem that looks hardest from the outside: it built its own motors, controllers, battery packs and software, and collected 32 patents across 60 countries for the effort. It could not do the part that looks easiest from the outside, which is closing a funding round on schedule and paying its own people and suppliers on time. The lesson is not that engineering does not matter; it is that in capital-intensive hardware, technical depth buys a company the right to compete, not the right to survive a financing gap. A three-wheeler maker’s factory, dealer network and payroll all run on cash flow timed in months, while a follow-on round can slip by years. Altigreen’s history is a reminder that the two clocks have to be managed together, and that a rescue deal going to a rival, as Hero Motors’ investment in Euler Motors did in March 2025, can matter more to a startup’s fate than anything happening on its own factory floor.

Frequently asked questions

What does Altigreen Propulsion Labs make?

Altigreen makes electric three-wheelers for India’s last-mile transport market: cargo variants (neEV, neEV Bhai, neEV Tez) built for delivery and logistics fleets, and a passenger autorickshaw, the neEV Rahi. It designs and manufactures its own motors, controllers, battery management systems and battery packs rather than sourcing them from outside suppliers.

Who founded Altigreen and when?

Amitabh Saran founded Altigreen in Bengaluru in 2013, alongside Shalendra Gupta and Lasse Moklegaard. Saran had previously worked at NASA and Hewlett-Packard and co-founded Buzzintown.com, which was acquired by Yatra.com.

How much money has Altigreen raised, and from whom?

Altigreen’s confirmed round is a Rs 300 crore (about $40 million) Series A in February 2022, led by Sixth Sense Ventures with participation from Reliance New Energy, Xponentia Capital, Accurant International and Momentum Venture Capital. Cumulative funding across all rounds is reported at roughly $48.8-48.9 million. A 2023 attempt to raise about $85 million at a $350 million valuation did not close, and a further round the company said it was pursuing in 2025 was unconfirmed as of the most recent reporting.

Is Altigreen Propulsion Labs profitable?

No. In FY24, the company reported a net loss of Rs 242.5 crore against revenue of Rs 119 crore, with the loss growing 209% year-on-year while revenue grew 25%. MCA-based filings reviewed by Tofler show a net profit margin of roughly -126% for the same year.

What happened with Altigreen’s fundraising troubles and the Hero Motors deal?

Altigreen was reportedly in advanced talks with Hero Motors for an investment of about Rs 900 crore in early 2025. In March 2025, Hero Motors instead invested Rs 628 crore for a 32.1% stake in a rival, Euler Motors. Altigreen’s vehicle dispatches had already fallen to 50-90 units a month by late 2024, and by mid-2025 employees said they had not been paid since the start of the year.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ Rs 96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Inc42, “Reliance-Backed Altigreen’s EV Three-Wheeler Dreams Hit A Wall,” June 2025
• Inc42, company profile page for Altigreen, accessed September 2026
• EVreporter, “Altigreen Propulsion Labs | Quick company profile,” accessed September 2026
• Tofler, company filing summary for Altigreen Propulsion Labs Private Limited (CIN U74900KA2013PTC067796), accessed September 2026
• Tracxn, company profile and shareholding for Altigreen Propulsion Labs, accessed September 2026
• Sixth Sense Ventures, “Altigreen raises Rs 300 cr funding led by Sixth Sense Ventures, Reliance New Energy & others,” February 2022
• DNA India, “Meet Amitabh Saran, ex-NASA employee, CEO of Mukesh Ambani-backed company seeking Rs 2,800 crore valuation,” 29 May 2023
• Autocar Professional, “Altigreen Propulsion Labs mulls securing Rs 700 crore in funding: Report,” 29 May 2023
• Founder Thesis, “From NASA to EVs: Amitabh Saran’s Drive to Power India’s Clean Mobility with Altigreen,” accessed September 2026

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