It is called the content creators’ paradox. You can produce a lot of content. You can also produce good-quality content.
It’s just difficult to do both together.
But when someone like Noah Smith or Ben Thompson manages to do both, it’s pure magic. Revenues go up, profits go up, happiness goes up.
India-based Ather Energy seems to be on track for that. It makes high-quality premium scooters. Logic says only a few of them should sell. But then it manages to sell quite a few of them every month.
Even better, that monthly number has been trending strongly upward.
And before we start with reporting the numbers, which everyone else has already done, here is a point to ponder.
Are premium EVs the only way to success? We read Tesla, Stark, and…Ather.
The company released its Q3 FY 2026 results yesterday, and there was an across-the-board improvement across all metrics.
The Numbers
Ather closed the quarter with operating revenues of INR 9536 million (USD 106 million), a 50.1% jump over operating revenues of INR 6349 million in Q3 FY 2025.
Within the quarter, Ather Energy enjoyed Gross Margins of 25.92%. For the same quarter, last financial year, the Gross Margins were 16%. Even on a quarter-on-quarter basis, Ather’s Gross Margins have improved from 22.1% to 25.92%.
The result of this has been a narrowing of EBITDA losses. Ather’s losses in this quarter were INR 796 million (USD 88 million), a near 60% improvement from losses of INR 1978 million in Q3 FY 2025. While they may still be a few quarters away from breaking even on an operational basis, the trajectory is right.
What is working for Ather?
Like any major durable goods market, we can divide the Indian scooter market into three bands.
Band 1 is the cream at the top. These are premium machines where buyers have greater price elasticity. From a tech perspective, these are the early adopters who value the sensors, software, and connectivity features that Ather loads up on. In a market like India, this market can easily have a potential of 500,000-800,000 units. This is the only segment that Ather plays in, and even its family scooter, Rizta, is only targeted at the premium early adapters.
Band 2 targets the real family buyers, the people who buy the Honda Activa or the TVS Jupiter. This is the meatiest band in the entire market and the most resilient to change. At its peak, this band is easily more than five million scooters a year. Everyone not named Ather is trying to scratch the surface here with little success.
Band 3 is the lowest band, which includes scooters used for delivery purposes. The market is dominated by the Indian second rung manufacturers and several small entrepreneurs who import containers full of e-scooter kits every month. The big players don’t participate here due to BoM cost challenges and brand erosion concerns.
For now, Ather plays only in Band 1, and despite the constrained volumes of the segment, it does well. Unlike everyone else, there has been no urgency to expand to Band 2 by lowering prices or adding discounts. This has allowed the brand to preserve margins even as the strong customer experience and retail presence expansion have lifted sales. It helps that the customers in the segment are okay to pay top dollar
What also works for Ather is the subscription revenue from software. Sometime last year, the company informed that software subscriptions now account for six percent of all revenues.
