Amit Gupta & Yulu: The Mind and Mobility Engine Behind India's EV Revolution
An exclusive dossier on Amit Gupta, the co-founder of InMobi and Yulu. Explore his journey, Yulu's funding, key metrics, and the strategy driving urban mobility.
He co-founded India’s first profitable unicorn, InMobi, and took on the world. Then, he turned his attention to a problem every Indian faces daily: crippling urban traffic. This is the story of Amit Gupta, a relentless, first-principles-driven entrepreneur, and his quest to build Yulu, the company at the forefront of India’s shared electric mobility movement. It’s a journey from the digital world of ad-tech to the complex, physical world of hardware, logistics, and transforming city life, one green ride at a time.
Check out the video of the conversation here or read on for insights.
Part I: The Founder - Amit Gupta
Genesis of an Entrepreneur
Amit Gupta’s entrepreneurial roots trace back to his childhood in Kanpur, a city in Northern India. Growing up in a family where business was a multi-generational pursuit, he was immersed in the world of commerce from a young age.
I saw from childhood days that how do you buy something, make something, and then sell it to consumers, building their trust, the value of relationship, the value of commitments... the value of your words was everything.
While his family expected him to join the family business after a standard commerce degree, Amit chose a different path. He pursued a demanding Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, an institution that would later honour him with a Distinguished Alumnus Award. This was followed by an exclusive executive program at Harvard Business School, further sharpening his business acumen.
His early career was a tour through technology and finance, starting as a software developer at Aditi Technologies during the dot-com boom. He quickly realized that while he appreciated technology's power, he wasn't destined to be a coder for life. A move to Citi Financial as an Assistant Manager shifted his focus to using technology to solve business problems, where he implemented the company's entire business intelligence backbone.
However, it was his time at Andale, a SaaS startup providing tools for eBay sellers, that he describes as “incredibly influential.” It was there he learned about marketplaces, scalability, and the power of cloud-hosted platforms—lessons that would become a recurring theme in his future ventures.
The InMobi Saga: Building India's First Unicorn 🦄
In 2007, Amit co-founded InMobi. It began as mKhoj, an ambitious plan to build a search engine on SMS. After early struggles and realizing the limitations of SMS, they pivoted to the mobile internet, building an ad network that connected publishers with advertisers.
This pivot was the spark. InMobi expanded at a blistering pace, not west to the US, but east, conquering markets in Southeast Asia and China before tackling Europe and the US. This journey was fueled by significant funding, including a landmark $200 million investment from SoftBank in 2011, which officially made InMobi India's first unicorn.
At InMobi, Amit held several critical leadership roles, from scaling the publisher network to serving as Chief Revenue Officer and President for North America. His final act at InMobi was incubating Glance, the revolutionary lock-screen content platform, born from a strategic need to give InMobi its own "Owned & Operated" property to compete with the data moats of Google and Facebook.
The Yulu Spark ⚡
By his late 30s, Amit had achieved incredible success. The thought of retirement crossed his mind, but it didn’t stick.
I thought 40 years, taking a chill pill probably is the right way to do. But somewhere, that thought after fast-forwarding two, three weeks or one month was not resonating. I was not able to imagine myself.
He started searching for a problem he would regret not solving by the time he was 50. The answer was right outside his window in Bengaluru. His daily 2.5 km commute had ballooned from 7 minutes to a frustrating 35 minutes. This personal pain point became the catalyst for his next big venture. In 2017, he left InMobi to start Yulu.
Part II: The Venture - Yulu
Yulu was founded in 2017. The mission was clear: tackle India's urban mobility crisis head-on.
The Mission: Solving for a Modern India
Yulu was designed to solve a trifecta of urban problems:
Traffic Congestion: Reducing the number of large personal vehicles used for short trips.
Air Pollution: Offering a green, zero-emission alternative to fossil-fuel vehicles.
First-and-Last-Mile Connectivity: Bridging the gap between public transport hubs and a user's final destination.
The Business Model & Product Strategy
The initial idea was pedal bicycles, but Yulu quickly pivoted to electric vehicles after observing user behaviour. This pivot led to a masterstroke in product strategy: focusing on Low-Speed Electric Vehicles (LSEVs).
These are vehicles with a top speed of 25 km/h. This crucial decision meant that under Indian law, riders do not need a driver's license or vehicle registration. This single move dramatically expanded their potential market, especially to the gig economy workers who form their core user base today.
Yulu's fleet is purpose-built for India's harsh urban environment, designed in collaboration with Bajaj Auto.
It's not built for usage. It is built for abuse.
Yulu's Fleet:
Yulu Miracle: The flagship LSEV for personal urban commutes.
Yulu DeX: A ruggedized version of the Miracle, specifically designed for the needs of delivery professionals, with a 15kg payload capacity. This is the workhorse of the fleet and the primary revenue driver.
Yulu Wynn: An LSEV for personal purchase, a segment that is currently a lower priority for the company as it focuses on scaling its shared mobility business.
Key Metrics & Growth Trajectory 📈
Yulu's growth has been explosive, driven by the rapid expansion of India's quick commerce and food delivery industries. The company has achieved EBITDA positivity and is on a clear path to full profitability.
Yulu by the Numbers (as of early-to-mid 2024):
Total Fleet Size: ~45,000 electric vehicles
Target Fleet Size: 100,000+ vehicles by early-to-mid 2026
Revenue (FY24): ₹123 Crore (a 164% CAGR in the last year)
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): >$30 million
Total Rides Completed: 80 million+
Total Kilometers Covered: 385 million+
CO2 Emissions Saved: Over 20 million kilograms
Deliveries Facilitated per Month: 20 million+
Battery Swaps by Yuma Energy: 10 million+
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Zero. The company is supply-constrained, with more demand from gig workers than available vehicles.
Funding and Key Investors 💰
Yulu has successfully raised between $124 million and $132 million in a mix of equity and debt financing. This is particularly noteworthy for an asset-heavy business. The ability to attract capital from major strategic investors validates their model and provides a powerful competitive advantage.
Key Investors: Bajaj Auto, Magna International, Blume Ventures, Wavemaker, Rocketship.vc, and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC).
The Ecosystem Advantage: Strategic Pillars
Yulu's moat isn't just its vehicles; it's the powerful ecosystem it has built through deep, strategic partnerships.
Manufacturing (Bajaj Auto): Bajaj, a global automotive giant, is not just an investor but also the exclusive manufacturer of Yulu's vehicles. This provides Yulu with world-class R&D and scaled, high-quality manufacturing capabilities that are impossible for a typical startup to replicate.
Energy (Magna & Yuma Energy): Yulu formed a joint venture with Magna, a global automotive supplier, to create Yuma Energy. Yuma provides the critical Battery-as-a-Service (BaaS) infrastructure, with a network of swapping stations where users can swap a battery in under a minute. This solves range anxiety and minimizes vehicle downtime, which is non-negotiable for delivery executives.
Market Access (Quick Commerce Alliances): Yulu has deep partnerships with every major player in the last-mile delivery space, including Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto, Blinkit, and Amazon. These alliances provide a ready and stable source of demand for the Yulu DeX.
The Technology Backbone ⚙️
Yulu is, at its heart, a technology company. Its entire operation is underpinned by a sophisticated tech stack.
Internet of Things (IoT): Every vehicle is equipped with an IoT device that sends hundreds of data points every few milliseconds, tracking location, battery health, and component stress. This enables predictive maintenance and asset security.
AI and Machine Learning: AI algorithms are used to predict demand, optimize fleet deployment, and manage the battery-swapping network efficiently.
Purpose-Built Tech: From the keyless, app-based unlocking system to the anti-theft protocols, the entire technology platform is designed in-house for the unique challenges of shared mobility in India.
Amit Gupta's journey from ad-tech pioneer to mobility revolutionary is a story of seeing problems not as obstacles, but as massive opportunities. By applying first-principles thinking, building a powerful ecosystem, and staying relentlessly focused on solving a real-world problem, he is not just building a company; he is building the future of mobility for urban India.
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