Startup Deep Dive : HOP Electric Mobility — revenue doubled to Rs 68.76 crore even as losses deepened

In its first full year of selling electric scooters, HOP Electric Mobility roughly doubled its revenue, from ₹32.07 crore in FY22 to ₹68.76 crore in FY23 (about $7 million). In the very same year, it slipped from a small net profit of ₹0.44 crore to a net loss of ₹5.68 crore, as audited figures reviewed by CARE Ratings show.

That contradiction — rising sales, deepening losses — is the story of a Jaipur company trying to buy its way into one of India’s most crowded markets. HOP is a forward integration of a solar-power group, backed by promoters with money and a Forbes 30-under-30 founder, yet by March 2024 its credit rating had been moved to “issuer not cooperating” because it had stopped sharing data with its own rating agency. This deep dive walks through what HOP sells, where the money came from, what the numbers actually say, and why the gap between ambition and margin is the whole point.

Quick facts

What HOP actually sells

HOP Electric Mobility makes and sells electric two-wheelers to Indian retail buyers, mostly through a network of exclusive dealerships. Its line-up splits cleanly into two categories:

• Low-speed scooters — the HOP LEO and HOP LYF families (basic, standard and extended-range variants), launched in June 2021, with a top speed of about 50 km/h and a claimed range near 125 km per charge (per CARE Ratings). These do not require a licence or registration under Indian rules, which widens the buyer pool.
• High-speed motorcycle — the HOP OXO and OXO X, launched in September 2022, with a claimed top speed of about 90 km/h and a claimed range of roughly 150 km per charge (per CARE Ratings). The OXO was launched at an introductory price of ₹1.25 lakh, going up to about ₹1.4 lakh for the OXO X variant (as reported by evo India).

By the FY23 review, the company listed eight models across the two categories. The economics of the two segments differ sharply: high-speed products generally fetch better margins than low-speed ones, per CARE’s rating rationale, which matters for the loss story below.

The origin: from solar farms to scooters

HOP did not start as a garage bet by first-time founders. It began as a deliberate extension of a solar-power business. Ketan Mehta founded Rays Power Infra in 2011 and built it into a turnkey solar EPC company; CARE Ratings notes the group had commissioned solar parks and projects totalling around 1,000 MW, and the wider Rays Group has company-stated deliveries of over 1.5 GW of solar assets. Mehta was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the energy category.

The founding insight came from the storage side of renewables. By Mehta’s own account, the team began studying the energy-storage business around 2018 and concluded that the first big commercial use of batteries would be electric mobility, because the addressable market there was far larger than stationary storage. Rather than sell cells to someone else’s vehicle, they decided to build the vehicle. HOP was incorporated in January 2020 as, in effect, a forward integration of the group’s energy business — the same promoters, the same balance-sheet backing, a new product. The company has also been awarded a mandate under the Government of India’s Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme for the auto sector.

The struggle years

HOP’s short history is a run of expensive lessons, each documented in the filings:

• A standing start (FY21): The company recorded total operating income of just ₹0.32 crore in the year to 31 March 2021 and a small net loss of ₹0.16 crore (audited). It was pre-revenue in any real sense; commercial sales only began in July 2021.
• The FY23 reversal: Having turned a token profit of ₹0.44 crore in FY22, HOP swung to an operating loss of ₹4.79 crore and a net loss of ₹5.68 crore in FY23 — even as revenue more than doubled. CARE attributes the swing mainly to higher freight and advertising spending, i.e. the cost of buying growth and shelf space.
• A postponed factory: HOP had planned about ₹10 crore of capex to set up its own assembly line in FY23, of which ₹7 crore was to be a term loan. Management told CARE the capex was postponed, and the company availed no debt during FY23 — a signal that it chose to conserve cash rather than expand capacity into losses.
• Going dark on its rating agency: In March 2024 CARE moved HOP’s bank-facility rating (CARE BB+/A4+) to the “issuer not cooperating” category, saying the company had not provided monitoring information despite repeated requests since August 2023 and had not paid surveillance fees. That is not a default, but it is a documented governance red flag for lenders.

The turning point: the OXO bet

The single pivot that defines HOP is the September 2022 launch of the OXO, its first high-speed electric motorcycle. Until then the company was a low-speed scooter maker: in FY23 roughly 90% of revenue still came from the low-speed segment, with the newly launched OXO contributing the rest, per CARE. The logic of the bet was margin. Low-speed vehicles are cheap to buy and licence-free, but they earn thin margins; high-speed products such as the OXO carry better unit economics.

The numbers on either side of the bet frame the tension. Revenue climbed from ₹32.07 crore (FY22) to ₹68.76 crore (FY23), a rise of about 114%. But the bet was front-loaded with cost — freight and advertising to build awareness for a premium motorcycle — and the bottom line went from a ₹0.44 crore profit to a ₹5.68 crore loss over the same period. HOP was, in plain terms, spending to shift its mix from low-margin scooters toward a higher-margin motorcycle, and the shift had not yet paid for itself by the last audited year.

The money behind it

HOP’s capital story is less about outside venture rounds and more about promoter and strategic backing:

• Seed round, April 2022: HOP raised a seed round led by Rays Power Infra, with participation from listed meter-maker Genus Power Infrastructure. Trade press reported the raise at about $2.5 million as part of a larger pre-Series-A plan; Tracxn and Crunchbase record roughly $2.6 million of total funding, while thekredible logs about $2.9 million across three rounds. The differences reflect undisclosed round sizes; treat the totals as reported estimates.
• FY23 infusion of ₹20 crore: During FY23 HOP raised ₹20 crore, per CARE — ₹10 crore in equity from Rays Power Infra (which held about 5% direct equity as of the rating) and ₹9.99 crore from Genus Power Infrastructure via compulsorily convertible preference shares (CCPS). The FY23 loss was, in CARE’s words, funded through this promoter and third-party infusion.
• Later rounds: Databases record a further seed round in August 2023 and an angel round on 29 March 2025, both at undisclosed amounts (Tracxn, Crunchbase).
• Reported valuation: Tracxn pegs the April 2022 round at a valuation of about $31.4 million, and notes the latest valuation is down roughly 21% from that peak. The company has not confirmed a valuation, so this is an unverified data-provider estimate.

The structural point: HOP is essentially bankrolled by its promoter group and a strategic corporate investor, not by a marquee venture syndicate. That gives it patient capital, but far less than the hundreds of millions raised by rivals such as Ather Energy.

How HOP makes money

The model is straightforward hardware manufacturing and dealer distribution, with the margin sitting in the product mix:

• Money in: HOP earns primarily from selling electric scooters and motorcycles through more than 150 exclusive dealerships spread across 14 states (per CARE, FY23). Revenue is unit sales times price, from about ₹50,000-class scooters up to ₹1.25–1.4 lakh for the OXO motorcycle.
• Costs out: The largest cost is bill-of-materials, dominated by battery cells. CARE notes imports formed roughly 50–55% of total material cost in the two years to FY23, mainly for battery cells. On top of that sit freight and advertising, which CARE flagged as the direct cause of the FY23 loss.
• Where the margin sits: In the high-speed segment. Low-speed vehicles are volume with thin margins; the OXO motorcycle is the higher-margin product HOP is trying to grow into. The mix shift is the entire margin thesis.
• The part people get wrong: Growing revenue at HOP has not meant growing profit. Because the company is buying market share in a subsidised, price-sensitive market, more sales in FY23 came with more loss, not less. Scale alone does not fix the unit economics here — mix and localisation of the battery do.

The numbers

The audited figures below are from HOP’s filings as reviewed by CARE Ratings (₹ crore). They are the most authoritative public financials available; the company stopped cooperating with CARE after FY23, so later audited numbers are not in the public rating record.

Reading across: revenue scaled from near-zero to ₹68.76 crore in two years, a genuinely fast ramp. But operating profit went negative in FY23 and gearing fell to 0.17 times — low debt, because HOP funded its losses with equity rather than loans. Data provider Tracxn separately places FY25 revenue in a wide ₹10–50 crore band, but that figure is unaudited and imprecise, so it is not treated as a hard number here.

Where the money comes from

The revenue and cost split is more concentrated than the eight-model catalogue suggests:

• By product (FY23): Around 90% of revenue came from low-speed electric vehicles; the balance from the high-speed HOP OXO, launched only in September 2022 (per CARE). The premium motorcycle that HOP markets hardest was still a small slice of sales.
• By channel: Sales run through 150-plus exclusive dealerships across 14 Indian states — a franchise-style distribution model rather than direct-to-consumer or online-first.
• By input geography: On the cost side, 50–55% of material cost was imported (mainly battery cells), tying HOP’s margins to global cell prices and India–exporter trade relations.
• The surprise: The company that brands itself around the high-speed OXO motorcycle still made the overwhelming majority of its money from unlicensed low-speed scooters in its last reported year. The premium story and the revenue story were, at that point, two different businesses.

The risks

The risks here are concrete and largely disclosed in HOP’s own rating rationale:

• Loss-making at scale: Revenue doubled in FY23 yet the company posted a ₹5.68 crore net loss driven by freight and advertising. If customer-acquisition and logistics costs stay high, growth keeps burning cash, and HOP depends on continued promoter infusions to fund it (CARE, FY23).
• Import dependence on battery cells: With 50–55% of material cost imported, HOP is exposed to cell-price swings, currency moves, and any change in import rules or geopolitics between India and cell-exporting nations (CARE). Localisation is not yet in place; the planned in-house assembly line was postponed.
• A brutally competitive market: CARE explicitly lists Ola Electric, Ather Energy, Hero Electric, Ampere and Okinawa as competitors. Several are far better funded — Ather alone has raised on the order of $500 million (Tracxn). HOP is ranked well down the pack by funding among more than 1,500 tracked competitors, which limits how long it can outspend rivals on marketing.
• Governance and disclosure signal: The move to “issuer not cooperating” in March 2024, plus unpaid surveillance fees, is a red flag for lenders and reduces the transparency any outside stakeholder can rely on.

The takeaway

HOP Electric is a case study in why a strong parent and fast revenue growth are not the same as a working business. The promoters brought solar-industry money, a credible founder and a strategic corporate backer, and they used it to scale sales from ₹0.32 crore to ₹68.76 crore in two years. What that capital could not buy quickly was healthy unit economics: in a subsidised, import-dependent, hyper-competitive two-wheeler market, doubling revenue in FY23 meant doubling down on freight and advertising and booking a loss. The transferable lesson is that in commoditised hardware, distribution and localised cost structure decide who survives — not the founding pedigree, and not the top-line growth rate. Until HOP either localises its battery cost or genuinely shifts its mix to higher-margin motorcycles, more scale is likely to mean more spend, financed by whoever is willing to keep writing the cheques.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns HOP Electric Mobility?

HOP Electric Mobility Private Limited is privately held by its promoter group. It was set up as a subsidiary of Shining Technologies Ventures, and its promoters also control solar-EPC firm Rays Power Infra, which held about 5% direct equity as of the FY23 rating. Listed meter-maker Genus Power Infrastructure invested via compulsorily convertible preference shares.

Is HOP Electric profitable?

No, not as of its last publicly audited year. HOP reported a net loss of ₹5.68 crore in FY23 (year to 31 March 2023), reversing a small ₹0.44 crore profit in FY22, even though revenue more than doubled to ₹68.76 crore, per CARE Ratings.

What does HOP Electric make?

Electric two-wheelers. Its range includes low-speed scooters (HOP LEO and HOP LYF families, launched June 2021, around 50 km/h) and the high-speed HOP OXO and OXO X motorcycles (launched September 2022, around 90 km/h with a claimed 150 km range).

How much funding has HOP Electric raised?

Public databases record roughly $2.6–2.9 million in total equity funding across seed and angel rounds since 2022 (Tracxn, Crunchbase, thekredible). Separately, CARE noted HOP raised ₹20 crore during FY23 — ₹10 crore equity from Rays Power Infra and ₹9.99 crore from Genus Power via CCPS.

Who are HOP Electric’s main competitors?

CARE’s rationale names Ola Electric, Ather Energy, Hero Electric, Ampere Vehicles and Okinawa Autotech among established rivals in India’s electric two-wheeler market. Several are far better capitalised than HOP.

Sources

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

• CARE Ratings, press release on Hop Electric Mobility Private Limited (audited FY21–FY23 financials, ratings, promoters, dealer network, imports, competition), March 2024
• Tracxn, HOP Electric / Hop Electric Mobility company profile (funding, valuation, revenue band, employee count, competitors), 2025–2026
• Crunchbase, Hop Electric company profile and funding timeline, 2026
• thekredible, Hop Electric funding overview, 2026
• PitchBook, HOP Electric company profile, 2026
• EMobility+, “HOP Electric Mobility Receives Funding of USD 2.5 Million”, May 2022
• evo India, “2022 HOP OXO electric motorcycle launched for ₹1.25 lakh”, 2022
• AutoFutures, interview with HOP Electric CEO Ketan Mehta (founding insight, storage-to-mobility thesis)
• The StartupLab, profile of HOP Electric (founding, PLI mandate, Rays Group background)

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