Gurugram-based electric mobility startup Drivn, founded by Manav Bansal and Alpna Jain, a former NITI Aayog executive, has built a $140 million capital pool, including an $80 million investment from Nomura in February 2026, and signed up around 300 electric buses and trucks, as it targets India’s capital-intensive heavy commercial EV segment.

Unlike passenger EVs, heavy vehicle deployment is charging-led, with use cases defined first and infrastructure built around them. Charging is planned route by route rather than as a public network, with dedicated stations at points of origin such as warehouses and depots along high-utilisation freight corridors like Chennai–Bangalore, Panipat–Kotputli, and the Gujarat–Madhya Pradesh belt.

For electric buses, the company has partnered with intercity operator LeafyBus to deploy fleets on high-traffic routes such as Delhi–Amritsar and Delhi–Dehradun, supported by dedicated charging infrastructure linked to these corridordeployments.

For trucks, this typically means closed-loop systems at factories and logistics hubs, while bus routes are supported by corridor-based charging set up alongside operators. The model reflects a policy-aware approach to infrastructure, with charging planned alongside fleet deployment rather than relying on public networks.

In the electric buses space, the company’s 18-odd electric buses have been leased to LeafyBus, which uses Drivn’s leasing platform to deploy electric fleets on intercity routes.

Drivn works with multiple OEMs, including Ashok Leyland, Tata Motors, JBM, and Volvo–Eicher, to source intercity electric buses, positioning itself as an aggregator rather than being tied to a single manufacturer. The company is also evaluating emerging electric truck platforms as the segment evolves

From day one, when Alpna and I started thinking about it, we had one clear idea, that we would focus on large form factors and scale,” Bansal said, speaking to businessline

That decision set Drivn apart. While much of India’s EV transition has so far been led by two- and three-wheelers, the founders chose to go after the hardest segment, heavy trucks and intercity buses, where adoption has lagged despite accounting for 70-80% of freight movement.

Both founders come from institutional backgrounds, with Jain bringing policy and investment experience from her stint at NITI Aayog and Bansal from global capital platforms—shaping Drivn’s approach to building a private-sector, finance-led solution rather than waiting for subsidies to unlock the market.

“At a very basic level, we buy the electric bus or truck and lease it to operators,” Bansal said, describing the model as simple in structure but layered with technology to optimise fleet performance.

The bet rests on economics. A diesel bus costs about ₹50 per kilometre to run, compared with roughly ₹35 per kilometre for electric, translating into savings of nearly ₹30 lakh annually. Drivn’s model captures these savings and shares them with operators, effectively turning cost efficiency into a financing mechanism. The founders say their approach is to solve the financing constraint first, rather than wait for infrastructure or subsidies to catch up.

The challenge is upfront cost. Electric buses can cost significantly more than diesel equivalents, making financing the key bottleneck. “You pay more upfront, but the savings are real—the gap is financing,” Bansal said.

Charging, another constraint, is being handled through partnerships rather than ownership. “We tie up with charge point operators… whoever gives us the best deal—Charge Zone, Statiq, Jio-BP,” Bansal said.

The founders have also consciously avoided government-heavy contracts. “In government contracts, you get the beta, not the alpha,” Bansal said, explaining the preference for private, market-led routes.

The founders are building the business with a capital-first approach, focusing on scale early to establish a foothold in what they see as a narrow window of opportunity. The company expects to build a vehicle asset base of over ₹1,200 crore in the near term and target ₹1,340 crore AUM by FY27, a scale that implies a rapidly expanding fleet as deployments accelerate.

A key part of the thesis is timing. “There is a five- to seven-year window before banks come in and scale and picks up; by then we would have scaled far ahead as the early adopters in the game” Bansal said.

Electric trucks and buses remain early in their adoption cycle, but the opportunity is large. If financing and infrastructure fall into place, they could become the most consequential segment of India’s EV transition., he explained.

Published on April 20, 2026