Ahmedabad-based electric motorcycle manufacturer Matter has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Bharat Taxi to deploy its AERA motorcycles in a three-month pilot, marking what could become one of India’s first large-scale attempts to build an electric bike taxi ecosystem around a cooperative ownership model rather than a conventional ride-hailing platform.
If the pilot succeeds, the companies plan to expand deployments across multiple cities, creating a new commercial use case for electric motorcycles in a market where fleet electrification has so far been dominated by scooters used for food delivery and e-commerce.
The partnership is significant because it comes as India’s bike taxi industry continues to grapple with an evolving regulatory framework. App-based operators including Rapido, Uber and Ola have faced restrictions and legal challenges in several States over the commercial use of two-wheelers for passenger transport.
For Matter, the economics are straightforward
Commercial riders typically travel far greater distances than private owners, making operating costs a decisive factor in profitability. Replacing petrol with electricity has the potential to improve rider earnings while lowering the total cost of ownership over the vehicle’s lifetime.
““Every litre of petrol comes directly out of a rider’s income. AERA changes that equation. It delivers the riding experience motorcyclists already know — with a gearbox — while eliminating fuel costs entirely,” said Arun Pratap Singh, Founder & Chief Operations Officer at Matter.
Singh said the three-month pilot is intended to validate the commercial viability of electric motorcycles in passenger mobility before moving to the next phase of expansion across multiple cities with Bharat Taxi. “After 90 days, we move to the next phase —multiple cities, and the creation of India’s first EV-first bike taxi ecosystem built around rider economics, not platform economics,” he said.
The three-month pilot will deploy Matter’s AERA motorcycles across Bharat Taxi’s Sarathi network to evaluate vehicle performance, rider acceptance and operating economics before the companies decide on a wider rollout.
The Sahakar Taxi Cooperative Ltd (STCL) was incorporated on June 6, 2025, under the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act, 2002, by eight national cooperative institutions — NCDC, AMUL, IFFCO, KRIBHCO, NAFED, NDDB, NCEL and NABARD.
The platform entered its pilot phase in December 2025, when driver onboarding began across select pockets of Delhi-NCR and Gujarat’s Saurashtra region to test its zero-commission model and app-based network.
The latest milestone came on June 27, 2026, with the commercial rollout of services across 14 cities in Gujarat, including Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara and Rajkot. The platform now offers bike taxis, auto-rickshaws and cabs under a single cooperative network while building partnerships for first- and last-mile connectivity with public transport systems.
The road ahead
Bharat Taxi has outlined plans to expand beyond Gujarat and Delhi-NCR into cities including Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Lucknow, Chandigarh and Kolkata, with a longer-term ambition of building a presence in more than 500 cities and towns. The cooperative also plans to support fleet expansion through financing for electric two- and three-wheelers backed by cooperative banks and institutions such as NABARD.