Founder and CEO, Kinetic Green | Founded 2015 | Pune
When Sulajja Firodia Motwani started Kinetic Green in 2015, petrol and diesel vehicles made up more than 99% of India’s market. There were no EV policies to speak of, few parts made in India, and very few customers who had ever thought about buying an electric vehicle.
She came to it with a famous surname and a complicated inheritance. Her family had put India on the Luna and the Kinetic Honda, and had then watched its two-wheeler business shrink and pass to Mahindra. Kinetic Green was a fresh start. A decade later, it had sold more than 1.5 lakh electric vehicles. This is her story.
Growing up with Kinetic
Sulajja was born into the Firodia family of Pune. Her grandfather, H.K. Firodia, worked across India’s young automobile industry, including at Bajaj Auto and Bajaj Tempo, before founding the Kinetic Group. Her father, Arun Firodia, went on to lead it. “My grandfather, H. K. Firodia has been the most major influence in my life and my main role model,” she told PaGaLGuY.
The group’s first big success came in the early 1970s with the Luna, India’s first moped. Reports differ on the exact launch year: Autocar Professional gives 1972, Business Today 1974. By 2010, the Luna had given mobility to more than 40 lakh Indians, the company told Business Today. “I grew up watching Kinetic take birth,” she said.
At school she ranked high in the SSC examinations and was a national-level badminton player, according to SheThePeople. She studied commerce in Pune, then went to the United States for an MBA at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. After that she spent about four years at BARRA, an investment analytics company in California.
She always meant to come back. “It was always my plan to move back home and work with Kinetic,” she told PaGaLGuY. She returned in 1996, Entrepreneur India reported, and spent her first two years travelling across India, meeting the company’s dealers.
The Kinetic Honda years
By then Kinetic was best known for a scooter. In the mid-1980s, its joint venture with Honda had launched India’s first gearless scooter, the Kinetic Honda, which was a big hit and forced Bajaj Auto to respond, according to Business Today.
By the late 1990s, the partnership had soured. Honda held a majority stake and wanted to take over the venture. The Firodias refused to sell. Instead, in 1998, they bought out Honda’s 51% stake for about ₹35 crore, according to an ICMR case study, and Honda went on to work with the Munjals’ Hero Honda. Sulajja argued the split had freed the company. “The tie-up with Honda was limiting our competitive capabilities,” she said at the time.
As joint managing director and later managing director of Kinetic Motor, she led its growth from a moped and scooter maker into a company with a full range of two-wheelers, including motorcycles, and worked with partners such as Hyosung of South Korea, SheThePeople reported. In 2003, Business Today named her a Young Super Achiever. The World Economic Forum also picked her as a Global Leader of Tomorrow and a Young Global Leader.
Selling the two-wheeler business
Without Honda, Kinetic Motor struggled against much bigger rivals. “Competition intensified in Kinetic Motor’s main segment of gearless scooters,” she told Business Today.
In 2008, Mahindra & Mahindra and Kinetic Motor formed Mahindra Two Wheelers, which took over Kinetic Motor’s two-wheeler business for about ₹110 crore. Mahindra held 80% and Kinetic 20%. Sulajja called it a strategic partnership. “The deal is a bit like having your cake and eating it too,” she told Business Today in 2010. Mahindra later left the venture in 2014.
The family’s other company, Kinetic Engineering, carried on making automotive components, including transmission gears for the Tata Nano. Sulajja became its vice-chairperson, in charge of group strategy.
Starting again, on electric
The next idea came through policy work. In 2014-15, the government asked the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers for input on electric vehicles. The delegation had nobody from two- or three-wheelers, so she argued that these segments could lead India’s EV shift, and invited other companies to join, Mobility Outlook reported. Electric two- and three-wheelers were later brought into the policy; the first round of the FAME subsidy had left them out.
She set up Kinetic Green Energy and Power Solutions as a standalone company in 2015. With ICE vehicles holding over 99% of the market, she described the move to Mobility Outlook as a business necessity for the group.
There was almost nothing to build on. “In 2013, there were no policies, technology or component manufacturing in EVs,” she told Autocar Professional in 2021. Kinetic Green worked with CSIR and three of its laboratories to develop what the company describes as India’s first electric three-wheeler using home-grown technology. “The first three-wheeler we developed had almost 65 percent import content,” she said. Over time, almost everything except the battery cells came to be made in India. “We didn’t take shortcuts like importing from China,” she told Entrepreneur India in 2025.
Government first, then the road
With almost no retail demand, the first vehicles went out through government programmes run with various ministries, she told Mobility Outlook. Kinetic Green also took part in welfare schemes that put vehicles in the hands of unemployed people and women entrepreneurs. In Uttar Pradesh, it worked with the state government on e-rickshaws; in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, it gave electric three-wheelers to women. According to Entrepreneur India in 2025, the company has deployed more than 27,000 e-rickshaws in Uttar Pradesh, and reports that drivers’ daily earnings rose from about ₹200 to ₹1,000.
Growth was slow at first. In 2018, Kinetic Green signed a joint venture with Italy’s Tonino Lamborghini for electric golf carts, and in February 2021 it launched its first electric two-wheelers. By August 2021, it had sold around 30,000 vehicles, with cumulative revenue of about ₹350 crore, and about ₹100 crore had been invested, she told Autocar Professional.
By December 2023, she said, it had sold about one lakh EVs in all and earned over ₹1,000 crore in revenue since it began.
The Luna comes back
In February 2024, Kinetic Green brought back the family’s most famous name. The e-Luna, an electric moped, launched at an introductory price of ₹69,990.
Months later, in August 2024, it closed its first external equity raise: about $25 million from London-based Greater Pacific Capital, valuing the company at around ₹1,467 crore according to TheKredible estimates reported by Entrackr. In 2025, she said the company had raised $26 million from Greater Pacific Capital and Venture Catalyst. Until then, growth had been funded by the promoters.
Where things stand
The road has not been smooth. Revenue fell from ₹301 crore in FY23 to ₹291 crore in FY24, while losses rose from ₹7 crore to ₹77 crore, Entrackr reported. In FY25, revenue fell further to about ₹220 crore, with a loss of about ₹80 crore, according to Inc42. It sold 11,460 vehicles in calendar 2024 and 8,355 from January to August 2025, Autocar Professional reported.
Even so, by July 2025 Kinetic Green said it had sold more than 1.5 lakh EVs, with cumulative revenue of about ₹1,500 crore, around 500 employees and over 300 charging stations in rural areas. That month it launched golf and lifestyle carts with the Lamborghini family, aimed at export markets.
The company that started by selling to government departments is now trying to win ordinary buyers, from rural families on the e-Luna to urban commuters waiting for its scooters. “The green transport train has left the station,” she told Entrepreneur India.
Founder Journeys is a Sakhi Sangini series telling the stories of women who built businesses in India. This story is based on public interviews and reporting.
Sources: Mobility Outlook (June 2021); Autocar Professional (August 2021, August 2022, December 2023, February 2024, September 2025); Entrepreneur India (March 2018, July 2025); Business Today (March 2010, September 2024); Entrackr (August 2024, February 2025); Inc42; SheThePeople (April 2015); PaGaLGuY; ICMR case study (2002); Kinetic Green.
