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Indian e-scooter maker Ather Power fell on its $352mn inventory market debut as buyers poured doubts on the unprofitable sector amid a wider drought in home listings.
Ather’s shares dropped greater than 4 per cent in Mumbai buying and selling on Tuesday, reversing earlier opening positive factors. The Bengaluru-based firm solely simply oversubscribed an preliminary public providing, with anchor buyers that included the Abu Dhabi Funding Authority.
Ather was based in 2013 and, as one in every of India’s first electrical two-wheeler start-ups, its founder has claimed the corporate’s quick charging and superior technological options have made it the “Apple” of the Indian e-scooter market.
However Ather commanded solely a 15 per cent market share of the e-scooter market within the March quarter, lagging behind its established rivals, together with TVS Motor and Bajaj Auto, who’ve ridden forward partially due to industry-wide discounting.
“It’s turning into extra crowded now and there’s intense competitors,” stated Kranthi Bathini, director of fairness technique at WealthMills Securities in Mumbai. “Buyers are very selective in selecting IPOs.”
Quantity progress of e-scooters in India is predicted to leap 25 per cent within the monetary 12 months by means of March 2026 after crossing 1mn items — or 6 per cent of the entire two-wheeler market — final 12 months, based on Crisil, an Indian score company owned by S&P International.
However following the Indian authorities’s discount of {industry} subsidies final 12 months, Crisil expects it should take some producers about three years to interrupt even, with the typical loss per automobile at pure e-scooter firms estimated to be as much as Rs30,000 ($355).
Mumbai-based SBI Securities advisable buyers keep away from Ather’s debut, pointing to the corporate’s lack of profitability and rising competitors.
Ather’s itemizing follows the high-profile IPO in August of sector chief Ola Electrical, which has since struggled with a fall in gross sales, together with buyer complaints and regulatory scrutiny over its bikes. Ola’s shares have tumbled 43 per cent to this point this 12 months.
Earlier, funding bankers had anticipated that 2025 would observe the earlier 12 months’s Indian IPO bonanza. Corporations together with Hyundai’s Indian unit rushed to market in 2024 to learn from a hovering inventory market and juicy fairness valuations as tens of millions of households punted their financial savings into native funds.
However a spate of awaited $1bn-plus listings, together with the flotation of the Indian arm of South Korea’s LG, have been placed on maintain, as US President Donald Trump’s commerce struggle additional clouds an already patchy image in India.
The benchmark BSE Sensex and Nifty 50 indices stay beneath their peaks seen again in September, after a slowdown in company earnings and a wider downturn for the Indian economic system.
India registered $6bn value of fairness capital market offers within the first quarter of 2025, a plunge from $15.9bn in the identical interval a 12 months in the past, based on Dealogic knowledge. There have been 41 IPOs within the first 4 months of 2025, half the quantity of a 12 months in the past.
“There’s uncertainty due to the tariffs and geopolitical tensions,” stated Bathini. “Which is why buyers are staying away.”
Devarajan Nambakam, co-head of India funding banking at Goldman Sachs, stated there had been “some overseas institutional outflows and a level of valuation correction”.
“From time to time, whether or not on account of an occasion inside or outdoors India, the market takes a essential pause to reassess,” he stated, including that Goldman Sachs was nonetheless working with shoppers “very actively” on IPOs.
