New Delhi, May 5 -- Bengaluru: In the summer of 2014, Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain, a couple of fresh-faced engineers from IIT Madras, were in a tiny lab tinkering with battery packs for a scooter. They didn't have a factory, a supply chain or even a working scooter; just an audacious question: Could India build a world-class electric vehicle company from scratch? No shortcuts, no Chinese kits and no import-and-assemble games. Just raw engineering, homegrown talent and the audacity to think long-term in a startup ecosystem addicted to speed and ill-suited for innovation.

A little over a decade later, Ather Energy isn't just selling electric scooters. It's selling proof that innovation can be commercialised in India. But the road to that ...