Can India turn retrofitment into the next mobility revolution?

Unlike new EV manufacturing, which rewards scale and centralisation, retrofitment rewards distribution through local workshops, technicians and entrepreneurship; with the right training, neighbourhood mechanic shops can become certified retrofitters, absorbing the existing workforce

Updated - October 21, 2026 08:48 am IST

People wait for their electric scooters at a vehicle charging and battery-swapping station in Bengaluru. | Photo Credit: SUDHAKARA JAIN

For decades, India’s growth story has been written in a familiar script: take a technology invented elsewhere, strip it down, re-engineer it for cost, and scale it for the masses. Generic drugs, low-cost telecom, frugal automobiles are examples of this approach. It is a script that India has performed brilliantly. The question India must ask now is whether it is ready to move from optimisation to creation.

There are signs that it already has. Digital payments existed long before Unified Payments Interface (UPI), yet UPI reimagined the entire architecture of a transaction and created a model good enough that other countries want to emulate. Retail existed long before quick commerce, yet ten-minute delivery rewired consumer expectations in a way no global template had. In both cases, India moved beyond the familiar script and engineered a new category of implementation for existing systems. These models are suited to India’s density, informality, and scale. Now, they are travelling across borders. Mobility presents a similar opening.

Vehicle retrofitment sits at the centre of the new opportunity. Retrofitment, which converts an existing petrol or diesel vehicle into an electric one by replacing the powertrain, keeps the chassis intact. It is a useful technical fix, but a genuine innovation opportunity arises from everything that needs to be built around it — from diagnostics for legacy vehicles, battery and power-electronics systems designed for retrofitted architectures, calibration software, testing protocols, safety certification, financing solutions, installation networks, and a skilled service workforce. Innovation arises from moving beyond a single product to creating an entire operating system for a new industry, whose definitive version is not built yet.

India has the raw ingredients to attempt it: a deep automotive supply chain, engineering talent that has already proven itself in frugal design, a fast-growing EV sector, credible software capabilities, and critically, a domestic market large and varied enough to pressure-test solutions.

The decentralisation edge

India’s advantage is structural. Unlike new EV manufacturing, which rewards scale and centralisation, retrofitment rewards distribution like local workshops, local technicians, and local entrepreneurship. India has already shown what decentralised infrastructure delivery looks like at scale.

The PM Surya Ghar Yojna (PMSGY) on rooftop solar has now reached over 63 lakh households, built through a network of more than 34,000 empanelled vendors that has generated more than 4.6 lakh jobs across the solar rooftop value chain. Here is the blueprint for what a retrofitment ecosystem could look like, encompassing not a few large factories, but thousands of certified local centres. Each centre can convert, service, and maintain vehicles while generating an average of at least 20 direct and indirect jobs.

India’s automotive geography is not confined to its metros. Millions of vehicles run in Tier-II and Tier-III towns and rural India, held together by an enormous, largely informal network of mechanics, garages, and spare-parts dealers. With the right standards and training, that existing workforce can be absorbed, converting neighbourhood mechanic shops into certified retrofitters. That proximity between service providers and vehicle owners also solves a trust problem that new technologies always face.

An opportunity for the Global South

The opportunity extends beyond India’s border. Countries across South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America share the same three conditions that make retrofitment relevant in India. They have large fleets of ageing vehicles, price-sensitive consumers, and ownership cycles far longer compared to wealthier markets. Collectively, the Global South spends more than $550 billion a year importing oil, a dependence that new EV sales alone will take decades to meaningfully dent, since new vehicles replace only a fraction of the fleet each year.

Retrofitment offers these countries a faster and cheaper route to displacing that fuel bill using vehicles already on their roads.