Thesis

1. Mobility is a multiplier

Logistics costs India about 8 percent of GDP, a share that has only recently come within the range of developed economies. Transport is the country's third-largest consumer of energy and about half of its oil demand. Twenty-two million people earn a living moving goods, and every rupee taken out of the cost of moving them shows up as competitiveness in manufacturing, agriculture and consumer goods. Improvements in mobility compound through every other sector, which is why we have never treated it as a niche.

2. Commercial fleets change first

A vehicle that runs 120 kilometres a day pays back a new drivetrain in months; a private car that runs 30 pays it back in years. So every shift in mobility technology reaches commercial fleets before consumers, and the registration data shows it. India registered 2.45 million electric vehicles in FY26, and the segments with the highest electric share are the ones that work hardest: passenger three-wheelers above 31 percent, two-wheelers in delivery fleets, buses in public procurement. Private cars follow from a small base.

This is the pattern we have invested behind since 2016: shared two-wheelers before private ones (Rapido), rapid charging for three-wheelers before home charging for cars (Exponent Energy), lease financing for fleet operators before consumer loans (Astranova). A small share of vehicles accounts for most of the distance travelled and energy consumed, and that is where an early investment earns its return.

3. The stack is shared

A fund that understands how vehicles are built, powered, financed and operated has a view into five industries that are changing at the same time, because they run on the same components: batteries, motors, power electronics, sensors, autonomy software and the data all of them produce. A gimbal that stabilises a camera on a drone works on a surface vessel. A rectifier that charges a bus operates a grid battery. A model that reads a vehicle's battery underwrites its loan.

That shared stack is why the definition of mobility on this site has widened from a bike-taxi marketplace to a target drone, and why the diligence has got deeper with it. We define mobility as anything that improves the movement of people, goods or energy across speed, cost, safety or range, on the ground, in the air, at sea or in orbit.

4. Value moves down the stack

Each shift changes who makes money at each layer. Electrification was not a product change; it re-drew the value chain, and the next shifts will do the same.

What we expect

• Commercial fleets keep electrifying on their own economics. The risk is a battery-price shock or a grid that cannot deliver power where the fleets are.
• India makes the components it imports today. The risk is that policy support goes to assembly rather than to the hard parts.
• The defence budget keeps moving towards cheap autonomous systems. The risk is that emergency procurement normalises and orders revert to the primes.
• Space, aerial and grid businesses reach revenue on seed-scale capital. The risk is a funding gap that strands mid-stage hardware companies before they get there.

We write these expectations down before we invest and revisit them each quarter. The theme pages below carry the current version of each, with the numbers and sources behind them.