Startup Deep Dive : Lithium Urban Technologies — revenue nearly doubled to Rs 145.6 crore, so did the losses

In FY2024, Lithium Urban Technologies’ revenue nearly doubled to ₹145.6 crore ($15.2 million) from ₹74.0 crore the year before — and its net loss still widened to ₹55.1 crore, the biggest in the company’s history, as per the company’s audited and provisional financials cited in ICRA’s May 2024 rating note. That is the contradiction at the heart of India’s best-known corporate electric-vehicle fleet operator: the faster it grows, the more it needs someone else’s money to survive.

The someone else is Green Growth Equity Fund (GGEF), a climate-infrastructure fund anchored by the Government of India’s sovereign wealth vehicle NIIF and the UK government’s development-finance arm, managed by EverSource Capital. GGEF owns roughly 77% of Lithium on a fully diluted basis as of March 2024, according to ICRA — a stake it built after buying out the company’s original venture investors in 2022, in the wake of a leadership crisis and a pandemic that had emptied Lithium’s cabs of the office commuters who paid for them.

Quick facts

What they do

Lithium Urban Technologies runs dedicated, all-electric vehicle fleets under contract for corporate clients, handling the daily pick-up and drop of office employees the way a traditional cab-leasing company would, except every car is battery-powered and the charging, routing and driver management sit on Lithium’s own software. The company describes itself as a business-to-business “corporate employee transportation” (CET) operator rather than a consumer ride-hailing app: it does not compete for walk-up fares, it signs multi-year contracts with employers who want their commute programme electrified. Since incorporation in October 2014, it has operated in more than 15 cities and, as of FY2024, ran a fleet of more than 2,400 EVs backed by a captive charging network of over 1,325 points, according to ICRA’s May 2024 rating note. Its client base has included Google, Accenture, Wipro, Infosys, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse, per the same report.

The origin

Sanjay Krishnan did not come to electric vehicles from a clean-energy background. His earlier career, as described in his Unreasonable Group founder profile, ran through strategy consulting at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), co-founding the web portal India.com, helping set up India’s first organised taxi service as its founding chief operating officer, business development for the Mittal group’s mining and steel interests in Africa, and a stint at Honeywell International. It was that taxi-industry apprenticeship — sitting inside the unit economics of a fleet business rather than looking at it from outside — that he carried into Lithium when he co-founded the company with Ashwin Mahesh in October 2014.

Mahesh brought a different kind of credibility. He had been a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Earth Science and Technology Centre before returning to India in 2004 to work on urban systems at IIM Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Science, and he had already built a public profile in Bengaluru’s civic and transport-reform circles, per his Wikipedia entry. In an interview with Paul Writer, Krishnan framed the founding insight plainly: prove, commercially, that electric vehicles were a viable substitute for fossil-fuel transport, not a subsidised experiment, and let disciplined execution rather than green branding do the selling. Lithium launched its service in June 2015 with ten Mahindra e2o hatchbacks in Bengaluru, according to The Better India — India’s first fleet built to run on batteries from day one, aimed squarely at corporates rather than retail commuters.

The struggle years

Lithium’s growth was neither smooth nor merely a matter of scaling chargers faster than competitors. Two distinct crises, four years apart in origin but overlapping in effect, tested whether the company would survive as an independent business at all.

The first was internal. Between December 2019 and February 2020, two C-suite executives — chief operating officer Priyanshu Singh and HR head Edward Francis Paul — left the company, as reported by The Ken in November 2020. In February 2020, Krishnan stepped back from day-to-day charge into a non-executive role, citing personal reasons, and Mahesh took over as interim CEO. An Ernst & Young company-wide audit that followed surfaced complaints about an “abrasive,” top-down leadership culture under Krishnan’s earlier tenure, which staff described to The Ken as toxic. Mahesh’s stint brought a more open management style and pandemic-survival moves — redistributing idle fleet, striking Uber spot-rental arrangements for vehicles with no corporate work, and exploring a freight business — but by mid-October 2020 he too had quit as interim CEO, citing differences with the board and management, clearing the way for Krishnan’s return to operational control.

The second crisis was external and financial, and it landed on top of the first. The Covid-19 pandemic hollowed out Lithium’s core business overnight: corporate offices went to work-from-home, and a fleet built to move office employees had no employees to move. ICRA’s rating reports show the damage in the numbers — revenue fell to ₹28.8 crore in FY2021 and ₹26.4 crore in FY2022, with net losses of ₹29.5 crore and ₹12.6 crore in those years respectively, and the monthly revenue run rate bottomed out at just ₹2.2 crore in March 2022, against a pre-pandemic run rate of about ₹3.5 crore a month. Seven years into operation, a company that had once billed itself as running India’s largest all-electric cab fleet was still not profitable, was bleeding leadership, and was burning cash faster than office reopenings could refill its cars.

The turning point

The turning point arrived in March 2022, when EverSource Capital announced that Green Growth Equity Fund, the climate-infrastructure fund it manages, had invested in Lithium Urban Technologies for a majority stake, in a deal Inc42 and Business Today both reported as exceeding $50 million. The transaction did two things at once: it gave Lithium’s earlier financial backers — including the International Finance Corporation and Lightrock India — an exit, and it handed effective control of the company to a fund whose own anchor investors are the Government of India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund and the UK government’s development-finance arm, a lineage ICRA’s February 2023 rating note lays out in detail.

Measured on either side of that event, the contrast is stark. In the fiscal year the deal closed, Lithium’s monthly revenue run rate was ₹2.2 crore in March 2022 and full-year FY2022 revenue was ₹26.4 crore, per ICRA. Two fiscal years later, FY2024 revenue had reached ₹145.6 crore (provisional), and GGEF had already infused close to ₹230 crore of primary capital into the company, with a further ₹50 crore committed for the following fiscal year, according to ICRA’s May 2024 note. Lithium did not simply get bigger after 2022; it got a parent with a balance sheet large enough to fund the losses that growth was still generating.

The money behind it

Lithium’s funding history splits into a venture-backed first phase and a single dominant institutional-investor second phase.

• International Finance Corporation (IFC): approved an $8 million investment via compulsorily convertible preference shares in May 2018, aimed at expanding Lithium’s electric fleet and charging infrastructure and cutting greenhouse-gas emissions from urban commuting, as per Mercom India’s report on the IFC disclosure.
• Lightrock India: co-invested alongside IFC in the same funding round, per Tracxn’s company profile, backing Lithium’s pre-pandemic scale-up across nine-plus cities.
• Green Growth Equity Fund (GGEF), managed by EverSource Capital: entered in FY2022 in a deal reported to exceed $50 million, took majority control, and provided the exit route for IFC and Lightrock. GGEF has since infused roughly ₹230 crore of primary funds into Lithium and committed a further ₹50 crore for the following fiscal year, per ICRA’s May 2024 note. GGEF itself is anchored by the Government of India’s NIIF and the UK government’s DFID, with total fund commitments of $741 million from investors including NIIF, DFID, CDC, FMO and BP, according to ICRA’s February 2023 report.

Across its full history, Lithium is recorded by Tracxn as having raised a cumulative $26.8 million across eight rounds from 48 investors — a figure that captures the venture-era fundraising before GGEF’s much larger, controlling infusion reset the ownership table in 2022. No public valuation has been disclosed for either the 2018 round or the 2022 transaction; only the deal size of the 2022 investment has been reported, and consistently, across Inc42, Business Today, EverSource Capital’s own release and Mercom India.

How it makes money

Lithium’s core revenue engine is a contract, not a fare. A corporate client commits to a fixed or dedicated fleet of EVs, with drivers, charging and route management bundled in, typically priced by vehicle, shift or kilometre rather than per trip — the model ICRA refers to throughout its reports as corporate employee transportation, or CET.

• Corporate employee transportation (CET): the primary and, per ICRA, still the dominant revenue driver, built on multi-year contracts with large employers rather than spot demand.
• Freight transportation: Lithium entered B2B freight using electric three-wheelers from the third quarter of FY2023, a diversification move flagged in ICRA’s February 2023 note.
• Ride-hailing partnership with Uber: a tie-up beginning in the second quarter of FY2024 lets Lithium monetise vehicles through Uber’s platform rather than leaving them idle between corporate shifts, per ICRA’s May 2024 report; the same playbook — Uber spot-rentals for underused cars — had already been used informally as a pandemic stopgap in 2020, per The Ken.
• Charging infrastructure: Lithium’s network of more than 1,325 charging points is currently used almost entirely for its own fleet, but ICRA flags it as a “monetisable asset” the company could open up as public charging infrastructure over the medium term.
• SaaS fleet-management platform: Lithium owns and operates the software layer used to manage transport requirements for retail and corporate customers and government entities, per ICRA — a technology asset layered on top of what is otherwise a capital-heavy vehicle business.

What people tend to get wrong about a business like this is assuming that revenue growth and operating improvement mean the same thing as approaching profit. Lithium’s operating margin (OPBDIT over operating income) improved from -117.0% in FY2021 to a positive 14.0% in FY2024, per ICRA’s tables — a genuine operational turnaround. But net profit after tax actually got worse in absolute rupee terms over the same stretch, from a loss of ₹29.5 crore to a loss of ₹55.1 crore, because a fleet business funds its vehicles with debt and leases, and depreciation, interest and lease costs on a rapidly expanding, capex-heavy EV fleet grow alongside the fleet itself. Getting the operating line right does not automatically fix the bottom line in a business this asset-intensive.

The numbers

All four years are standalone, audited (FY2024 provisional) figures reported in ICRA’s rating rationales of February 2023 and May 2024. Cash and bank balances tell their own version of the same story: Lithium held ₹193 crore as of 31 October 2022, falling to ₹54.3 crore by 31 March 2024, per ICRA — liquidity spent funding growth and losses rather than accumulating as a cushion.

Where the money comes from

• Sector concentration: IT and IT-enabled services (IT/ITeS) clients — IT companies, KPOs and BPOs — accounted for 90-95% of Lithium’s revenue before the pandemic, per ICRA’s February 2023 report.
• Diversification since: that concentration had fallen to roughly 75% by early 2023 and remained at approximately 75% as of ICRA’s May 2024 update, as Lithium added clients in consulting, BFSI, manufacturing, FMCG and pharmaceuticals.
• Geographic footprint: operations in more than 15 cities as of 2022-2024, per both Inc42 and ICRA, with Bengaluru, the National Capital Region, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Mumbai named by Inc42 as key markets.
• The surprise: for a company whose brand is built on being India’s electric-fleet pioneer, its revenue is still concentrated in a single demand pocket — corporate commuting for technology-sector employers — meaning Lithium’s fortunes have tracked the IT industry’s return-to-office policies almost as closely as they have tracked EV adoption.

The risks

• Continued reliance on IT/ITeS demand: with roughly three-quarters of revenue still tied to one sector’s office-attendance policies, a renewed shift toward remote work at large IT employers would hit Lithium’s core CET business directly, per the concentration data in ICRA’s own reports.
• Negative cash accruals and parent dependence: Lithium posted a net cash loss of approximately ₹25 crore, adjusted for leases, in FY2024 against an earlier internal expectation of reaching cash breakeven, and ICRA explicitly expects the company “will continue to require funding support for growth from the parent entity” GGEF in FY2025 — a structural dependence on one shareholder’s continued willingness to fund losses.
• Debt-funded capacity expansion against a weakening credit profile: Lithium’s aggressive fleet build-out is financed substantially through external borrowings against an order book, and ICRA downgraded the company’s long-term rating from [ICRA]BBB+ to [ICRA]BBB and its short-term rating from [ICRA]A2 to [ICRA]A3+ in May 2024, citing a slower-than-anticipated ramp-up of operations and elevated fixed costs from preponed charging-infrastructure spend.

The takeaway

Lithium’s decade offers a lesson that looks obvious only in hindsight: an electric-fleet operator markets itself with the vocabulary of a technology company — a SaaS platform, an app, a sustainability story — but its balance sheet behaves like an infrastructure business, one where vehicles are financed like assets and revenue takes years to outrun depreciation and interest. The founders who proved the concept, running India’s first all-electric corporate fleet from ten Mahindra e2o hatchbacks in 2015, are not the shareholders who control the company today; a patient, sovereign-anchored capital pool is. That is not necessarily a failure story. It is a reminder that in capital-intensive green infrastructure, surviving long enough to reach scale can matter more than who owns the idea once you get there.

Frequently asked questions

What does Lithium Urban Technologies do?

It operates dedicated, all-electric vehicle fleets under contract for corporate clients — a business it calls corporate employee transportation — and has since added freight transport on electric three-wheelers, a ride-hailing partnership with Uber, and a SaaS platform for managing corporate and government transport, according to ICRA’s May 2024 rating report.

Who owns Lithium Urban Technologies now?

Green Growth Equity Fund, managed by EverSource Capital and anchored by India’s National Investment and Infrastructure Fund and the UK government’s development-finance institution, holds approximately 77% of the company on a fully diluted basis as of March 2024, per ICRA. Co-founder Sanjay Krishnan remains Founder and CEO.

Is Lithium Urban Technologies profitable?

No. The company posted a net loss of ₹55.1 crore in FY2024 (provisional), its widest yet, even as revenue nearly doubled to ₹145.6 crore, per ICRA’s May 2024 rating rationale. Its operating margin has improved sharply since FY2021, but net losses have grown in absolute terms because of rising depreciation, interest and lease costs on its expanding EV fleet.

How big is Lithium’s EV fleet?

ICRA’s May 2024 report put the fleet at more than 2,400 EVs, supported by a captive charging network of over 1,325 points, across operations in more than 15 Indian cities.

What happened to Lithium’s original founders?

Co-founder Ashwin Mahesh served as interim CEO through 2020 after Sanjay Krishnan moved to a non-executive role amid a leadership crisis and an Ernst & Young workplace-culture audit, then quit that role in October 2020 citing differences with the board, per The Ken’s reporting. Krishnan returned to operational control and remains Founder and CEO; Mahesh is no longer part of day-to-day management.

Sources

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

• ICRA, “Lithium Urban Technologies Private Limited: [ICRA]BBB+ (Stable)/[ICRA]A2 assigned”, February 2023
• ICRA, “Lithium Urban Technologies Private Limited: Ratings downgraded to [ICRA]BBB (Stable)/[ICRA]A3+”, May 2024
• Inc42, “EverSource Capital Acquires Majority Stake in EV Startup Lithium Urban Technologies”, March 2022
• EverSource Capital, “Eversource Capital invests in Lithium”, March 2022
• Business Today, “EverSource Capital buys majority stake in EV start up Lithium for over $50 mn”, March 2022
• Mercom India, “IFC to Invest $8 Million in Lithium Urban Technologies”, May 2018
• The Ken, “Charges and sparks fly in the Lithium leadership tussle”, November 2020
• The Better India, “Meet The Bengaluru Startup Running India’s First All-Electric Taxi Fleet”, January 2020
• Tracxn, Lithium Urban Technologies company profile, accessed September 2026
• Unreasonable Group, Sanjay Krishnan founder profile, accessed September 2026
• Paul Writer, “In conversation with Sanjay Krishnan, founder of Lithium Urban Technology”, accessed September 2026
• Wikipedia, “Ashwin Mahesh”, accessed September 2026

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