EKA's ₹3,500 Crore Pune Plants Face PM E-DRIVE Delivery Test
EKA Mobility now has the factories. What it has not yet shown is the delivery rate its share of India's largest electric bus tender requires.
EKA Mobility opened six plants in Pune and Pithampur on October 30 against an order book of more than 11,000 buses, valued at $1.7 billion. Vahan registration data compiled by Sustainable Bus show that Pinnacle Mobility Solutions, the group entity that includes EKA, registered 310 electric buses in all of 2025.
Six Plants and ₹3,500 Crore Behind a Pune Cluster
Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari inaugurated the facilities virtually at EKA Avirbhava, the group's Pune campus, with Heavy Industries Minister H D Kumaraswamy and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis attending. Chairman Sudhir Mehta put the group's manufacturing investment above ₹3,500 crore across 11 plants on 120 acres, with capacity for more than 40,000 electric vehicles a year. That capacity figure covers electric buses, small commercial vehicles and medium and heavy trucks together. The company has not published a bus-only number. Reported figures diverge. PTI and EVreporter cite research and development spending of more than ₹600 crore; The Statesman reported ₹1,000 crore over five years. The group's projection of 2.5 lakh jobs over five years spans its own operations and its wider supplier ecosystem. Its current workforce is above 6,000.
Three Manufacturers Hold 96% of the PM E-DRIVE Tender
The order book rests largely on one contract. In the Convergence Energy Services Limited (CESL) tender for 10,900 buses under the PM E-DRIVE scheme, concluded in December 2025, EKA secured 3,485 buses, second to PMI Electro Mobility at 5,210. Olectra Greentech took 1,785. Tata Motors, VE Commercial Vehicles and JBM Auto won none. The buses go to Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Surat under a gross cost contract model, in which private operators own and run the fleet while city transport undertakings pay a fixed fee per kilometre. EKA's share includes 915 buses for Hyderabad. Separately, it holds a 1,750-bus Bengaluru deployment with operator Chartered Speed.
Delivery Rate Is the Constraint, Not Plant Capacity
Set against the market, the backlog is large. India registered 4,441 electric buses in 2025, according to Sustainable Bus. EKA's order book equals roughly two and a half years of the entire national market at that pace. Pinnacle registered 171 buses in the first half of 2026, a run rate close to its 2025 total. The scheme sets the clock. The government extended PM E-DRIVE to March 2028 and kept its e-bus allocation at 14,028 units, with ₹4,391 crore earmarked. Grant payments are linked to milestones over 18 months from the post-selection process that began in March 2026. The exposure sits with city transport undertakings. Bengaluru alone expects about 4,500 buses from the tender, and with three manufacturers holding nearly the whole award, a delay at any one leaves few substitutes. Ashok Leyland's electric arm, OHM Global Mobility, has also challenged the outcome in the Delhi High Court. For Pune, the plants anchor a commercial EV cluster with ministerial backing. Kumaraswamy told the industry at the launch that success should be measured by how much technology is designed in India, not by sales alone.
What to Watch
Three signals will show whether the plants convert the order book. The first is EKA's monthly Vahan registrations through 2027, which must rise several-fold from the 2025 level to meet tender timelines. The second is milestone-linked PM E-DRIVE disbursements to operators running EKA buses in Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The third is the Delhi High Court challenge. A ruling that reopens any part of the 10,900-bus award would reset delivery schedules for all three winners.
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