India is the country with the cleanest data availability. That allows us, on the first day of every month, to analyze the country on E2W sales, market shares, and (most importantly) the E2W penetration rates.
We start with the last of them first. October 2025 was brutal for E2W penetration. From nearly 8.1% in September 2025, the E2W penetration crashed to 4.57%. This is much lower than the grey trend channel from 5.1% to 6.5% penetration, which we like to use as a reference check on the market.
Surprisingly, the crash in E2W penetration numbers comes in a month where the absolute E2W sales numbers, at nearly 144k, were the highest ever for the industry. At more than 3.0 million, the ICE two-wheelers hit it out of the market.
October 2025 was the traditional Hindu festive month, and many customers delayed purchases to take deliveries during this period. It is considered auspicious in Hinduism, India’s dominant religion. From the data, it appears that customers were more enthusiastic about buying ICE two-wheelers than they were about E2Ws.
GST Cuts Helped…ICE
The Indian government recently reduced the GST on ICE two-wheelers from 28% to 18%. There is no such reduction on E2Ws as their tax rate is already at a low 5%. However, the GST rate cut on ICE two-wheelers has increased the delta between ICE and EVs, always loaded in favor of ICE, from 14% to about 21% in terms of on-road prices. For this, we compare the best-selling ICE scooter (Honda Activa 110) to one of the best-selling E2Ws (TVS iQube 3.1 kWh).
E2Ws have Less Seasonality
The data also indicates that E2Ws have less seasonality than ICE two-wheelers and are finding more commercial applications, where purchase is need-driven, than ICE two-wheelers, where purchases can be vanity-driven to some extent.
Most importantly, the numbers indicate that last month’s high E2W penetration rate of nearly 8.1% was artificial to some extent, as ICE two-wheeler buyers were holding back from buying. Maybe the penetration should have been moderately lower in September 2025 and should not have been as dismal as it was in October 2025.
As an illustration, Royal Enfield, a premium ICE motorcycle manufacturer (>350 cc), sold nearly as many motorcycles as the entire E2W industry combined.
Marketshares / Winners and Losers
In October 2025, Bajaj was back at the #1 spot with sales of 31,168 units (21.69% market share). Recall that August 2025 was a really bad month for the brand when its market share was down at 11.26% as it faced a shortage of motors due to a restricted supply of rare earths. The other brands were relatively insulated due to better supply chain planning, or decided to import motors to sustain sales momentum.
Since then, things have normalized, and Bajaj has steadily improved its numbers and market share.
TVS Motor was at the #2 spot with sales of 29,484 units (20.52%). Last month, the brand had a market share of 21.61%.
Ather Energy: The Tortoise with a Booster Strapped
Ather Energy has been the steady success story over the last six months. October 2025 was a fantastic month for the brand as sales hit 28,061 units. Ather is now snapping at the heels of TVS and Bajaj with a sales network that is a fraction of the size of what the two market leaders have. We are headed for interesting times.
To put it in context, Ather has now increased absolute sales numbers by more than 150% in the last six months.
Ola Falls Hard
Ola continued its decline and seems now in a ‘give up’ mode. For the brand, giving up means that it has no more money to burn by offering huge discounts. In the absence of that, it is difficult to sustain sales. In October, Ola had sales of 16,034 units and a market share of 11.16%. In terms of market share, this was Ola’s lowest performance this year.
The performance is especially dismal considering Ola has the widest portfolio of products in the market, and at 4,000 outlets, a network that is comparable to what Bajaj and TVS have. Ola is also the only leading player with a motorcycle in the portfolio; motorcycles outsell scooters 2:1 in India.
Hero Vida Continues to Rise
Ola’s fall may put it at #4 in the pecking order of October 2025, but it was only 70 units ahead of #5 placed Hero Vida.
Give it another month…
Hero Vida has been steadily increasing sales, and at 15,934 units, it had its best month ever. This represented a market share of 11.09%.
The Others
Beyond the top five, the market has another ten players that are worth talking about. We will have a detailed analysis on them soon, but for this month, Greaves Electric, Bgauss, and Simpl Energy had their best months ever.
Greaves in particular saw sales jump to 7,629 units, a market share of 5.31%. This was the company’s best market share performance this year.
