How Sulajja Firodia Motwani built Kinetic Green, an EV company for India’s last mile

Most Indian industrial families with a famous brand name do one of two things with the next generation: hand the business down to the sons, or watch the daughters take it abroad. Sulajja Firodia Motwani chose neither. She returned from a US consulting career in her twenties to run the Kinetic family auto business at a moment when it was, by her own public account, already in trouble, and went on to found Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions in 2015, a separate, India-focused electric-vehicle company that became one of the country’s early branded players in electric three-wheelers and small electric two-wheelers.

The Kinetic name is older than most Indian readers under 40 realise: Kinetic Honda, the scooter that defined Indian middle-class mobility in the 1980s and 1990s, came out of that family business. Motwani’s second act, using the same name to build an EV company, is one of the more deliberate inter-generational pivots in Indian manufacturing.

Early life

Sulajja Firodia Motwani was born into the Firodia family in Pune, the third-generation industrialist in a household built around two-wheeler and three-wheeler manufacturing. Her grandfather, Navalmal Firodia, was a Gandhian industrialist associated with the founding generation of Indian auto manufacturing. Her father, Arun Firodia, is the long-time chairman of the Kinetic Group and one of the architects of the company’s rise; he was awarded the Padma Shri for his contribution to Indian industry. Growing up around the business meant that the language of manufacturing, vendors, BOM costs, factories, dealer networks, was the dinner-table language of her childhood.

Education

Motwani is one of a small number of Indian industrialists with a top-tier US business-school credential who chose to come back rather than stay. She holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Pune and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business in the United States. The Carnegie Mellon training matters in two specific ways for the story that follows. First, it gave her a finance vocabulary, capital structure, working capital, distribution economics, that is rarely native to second- or third-generation operators who learn the trade purely on the factory floor. Second, it built the international network through which she later evaluated EV technology partners.

Career before Kinetic Green

After her MBA, Motwani began her career in the United States as a strategy consultant before returning to India in the mid-1990s to take operational responsibility inside the Kinetic Group. Public coverage of her early career places her in increasingly senior roles at the family business, including as Joint Managing Director of Kinetic Engineering, where she became the face of the next-generation leadership. Through the late 1990s and 2000s she was repeatedly profiled in Indian and international press as a young woman running a publicly listed Indian manufacturing company, an extreme rarity in that era, including features in Forbes, BusinessWeek and India Today, and she was named to lists of leading young global business figures, including World Economic Forum Young Global Leader recognition. That run also covered the most painful chapter of the family story: the 2008 unwinding of the Kinetic Honda joint venture, in which Honda exited the partnership and the Kinetic side of the business contracted sharply. That experience, more than any classroom, is what shapes her later decisions.

Why she started Kinetic Green

The thesis behind Kinetic Green is specific and well-documented in her own public interviews. After the contraction of the legacy two-wheeler business, Motwani read the next decade of Indian mobility through three converging signals: tightening urban-pollution regulation; the structural rise of the last-mile commercial vehicle, the three-wheeler that does delivery, e-commerce drops and short-distance passenger work; and the falling cost of lithium-ion battery packs, which was about to make electric drivetrains commercially viable for these vehicles before they were viable for passenger cars. The right move was not to build another internal-combustion scooter for the urban consumer, that market was being defended by far larger incumbents, but to build an EV company aimed at the commercial three-wheeler segment, where the unit economics tip first and the customer is a fleet operator rather than an aspirational individual.

Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions was incorporated in 2015 as a separate company within the family group umbrella, with Motwani as its founder. The product lineup centred on electric three-wheelers, passenger e-rickshaws and cargo three-wheelers, with electric two-wheelers and golf carts added over time. Crucially, Kinetic Green was structured so it could operate at start-up speed rather than carrying the cost base of the older listed entity.

The early struggle

India’s EV market in 2015 barely existed at the commercial-vehicle scale Motwani was targeting. Three structural problems had to be solved in parallel. First, the cost of batteries was still high, and consumer financing for small commercial vehicles was poorly developed, so even economically rational fleet customers struggled to write the upfront cheque. Second, the policy framework was unstable: subsidies under the FAME scheme changed multiple times in the company’s early years, which made product roadmaps and pricing extremely difficult to lock down. Third, the dealer network and after-sales ecosystem for EVs did not exist; servicing electric three-wheelers in a tier-3 town was, in 2016, a genuinely unsolved problem. None of these are headline failures, they are the quiet kind that kill EV companies in their first three years, and Kinetic Green spent that period building precisely the things that were missing.

Funding & revenue

Kinetic Green has historically been funded out of internal capital and a small set of strategic investors, with successive announcements of growth capital and joint ventures over its life. In 2022 and 2023 the company disclosed a strategic technology and capital partnership with Tonino Lamborghini for premium electric two-wheelers, and announced separate plans for capacity expansion in three-wheelers and electric two-wheelers. The company is privately held; specific revenue and profitability numbers are not consistently disclosed and any precise figure would be unreliable, so this profile does not assert one. The durable, verifiable facts are the product range across electric three-wheelers, electric two-wheelers and golf carts; the manufacturing footprint in Maharashtra; and the strategic partnerships visible in the public record.

Sulajja Firodia Motwani’s net worth & ownership

There is no reliable, independently disclosed net-worth figure for Sulajja Firodia Motwani. Her ownership sits across the broader Firodia family holdings in the Kinetic group of companies and her direct stake in Kinetic Green Energy. Most of that is illiquid private equity rather than a market-priced public stake, so circulating estimator-site figures are speculative and not repeated here.

Kinetic Green milestones timeline

• 1990s, Sulajja Firodia Motwani returns to India after her Carnegie Mellon MBA and joins the family business, eventually becoming Joint Managing Director of Kinetic Engineering.
• 1998–2008, Profiled in international and Indian business press as one of the most prominent young women running a listed Indian manufacturer; named to global young-leader lists.
• 2008, The Kinetic Honda joint venture unwinds, marking a structural reset for the family auto business.
• 2015, Founds Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions in Pune, aimed at electric three-wheelers and adjacent EV products.
• 2016–2020, Builds dealer and service network across Indian cities; launches multiple electric three-wheeler variants and electric two-wheelers; navigates evolving FAME policy.
• 2022–2023, Announces strategic partnership with Tonino Lamborghini for premium electric two-wheelers; expands manufacturing capacity.

Kinetic Green business model

Kinetic Green operates a manufacturer-to-dealer model focused on commercial small-EV segments, with the bulk of revenue coming from electric three-wheelers sold to fleet operators, individual drivers, and government tenders. Two structural choices keep the unit economics defensible. First, the product mix is concentrated in segments where electric is already cheaper to operate than petrol or CNG on a total-cost-of-ownership basis, the high-utilisation commercial three-wheeler is the cleanest example. Second, the manufacturing strategy is deliberately Indian-supply-chain-first, which lets the company manage costs and lead times through volatile periods in global EV components.

Kinetic Green competitors

The honest competitive set in electric three-wheelers includes Mahindra Electric (the incumbent with the deepest dealer network), Piaggio in commercial three-wheelers, and a fragmented universe of unbranded e-rickshaw assemblers concentrated in north India. In electric two-wheelers, Kinetic Green sits alongside Ola Electric, Ather, TVS, Bajaj and Hero on the same retail shelf, although its volumes in two-wheelers are smaller than the scooter-focused incumbents. Kinetic Green’s structural pitch is the combination of a recognised auto brand from the family’s legacy, a focused commercial-EV product line, and a willingness to play the unsexy parts of the market, tenders, fleets, smaller cities, where the larger consumer-EV brands have been less aggressive.

Growth strategy

Three deliberate choices define the build. First, lead with the commercial three-wheeler rather than the urban consumer scooter, the segment where electric beats petrol on TCO first and where customer behaviour is rational rather than aspirational. Second, ring-fence the new company from the legacy balance sheet, so the EV business can move at its own speed and structure investor partnerships independently. Third, treat brand heritage as a distribution asset, not a marketing slogan: in tier-2 and tier-3 markets, the Kinetic name is a trust signal that a new entrant has to buy with advertising and Kinetic Green inherits for free.

What Sulajja Firodia Motwani’s story teaches Indian founders

Two lessons travel forward. First, family-business heritage is an asset only if it is converted into a new company structured for the new market, inheriting a brand and an old factory is not the same as inheriting a competitive position. Motwani’s decision to set up Kinetic Green as a separate, EV-focused entity is the operating move that made the heritage usable. Second, the right time to start an EV company in India was not when the consumer market got exciting; it was years earlier, when the commercial-vehicle TCO crossover was already visible to anyone reading the unit economics carefully. Patience in front of an emerging market is the underrated founder skill.

Sources & verification

This profile is anchored only in publicly verifiable facts. Key claims are supported by:

• Sulajja Firodia Motwani founded Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions in 2015 and serves as Vice Chairperson of the Kinetic Group, Kinetic’s own corporate materials and consistent Indian business-press coverage (Economic Times, Business Standard, Forbes India, YourStory).
• Carnegie Mellon MBA and career as Joint Managing Director of Kinetic Engineering before the EV pivot, Multiple independent profile features and her well-documented selection as a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.
• Kinetic Group’s history includes the Kinetic Honda joint venture and its 2008 unwinding, Public corporate filings and contemporaneous business-press coverage.
• Strategic partnership with Tonino Lamborghini for premium electric two-wheelers and ongoing electric three-wheeler operations, Joint company press announcements and independent industry coverage.

Frequently asked questions about Sulajja Firodia Motwani and Kinetic Green

Who is Sulajja Firodia Motwani?

Sulajja Firodia Motwani is an Indian industrialist, the Vice Chairperson of the Pune-based Kinetic Group, and the founder of Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions, an electric-vehicle company. She is a third-generation member of the Firodia industrial family.

What is Kinetic Green and what does it make?

Kinetic Green Energy & Power Solutions is an Indian electric-vehicle company founded in 2015. Its product lineup is centred on electric three-wheelers, both passenger e-rickshaws and cargo variants, with electric two-wheelers, golf carts and adjacent EV products added over time.

How is Kinetic Green related to Kinetic Honda?

Kinetic Honda was a 1980s–2000s joint venture between the Firodia family’s Kinetic Group and Honda of Japan that produced one of the most iconic Indian scooters of the era. That joint venture unwound in 2008. Kinetic Green is a separate company founded in 2015 by Sulajja Firodia Motwani within the broader Kinetic Group umbrella, focused on electric mobility.

What is Sulajja Firodia Motwani’s net worth?

There is no reliable, publicly disclosed net-worth figure for Sulajja Firodia Motwani. Her wealth sits across illiquid private holdings in the Kinetic group of companies and her direct stake in Kinetic Green; estimator-site figures are speculative and are not repeated here.

What can founders learn from Kinetic Green?

That family brand heritage is best converted into a new, separately structured company built for the new market, and that the right time to start an EV business in India was determined by the unit economics of commercial vehicles, not by the hype cycle in consumer EVs.

More founder journeys: women in Indian manufacturing · women founders in Pune · women founders in mobility.