Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Ather Energy Limited Q3 and FY 2026 Result Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touchscreen phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Murali Sashidharan, Head of Public and Government Relations at Ather Energy. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Ather Energy Limited's Q3 FY 2026 earnings conference call. From the management team, we have with us today Mr. Tarun Mehta, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Sohil Parekh, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, let me draw your attention to the fact that today's discussions may include certain forward-looking statements which are predictions, projections, or other estimates about future events. These statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Please note that this conference is being recorded. With that, I would now request Mr. Tarun Mehta to share his opening remarks. Following that, we will open the forum too for question-and-answer session.
Okay, thanks, Murali. So let me just get straight into the deck. So Q3 was a particularly strong quarter for us. Units sold were 68,000, which was up 50% year-on-year. Total income was just shy of INR 1,000 crores, up again 53% year-on-year. Adjusted gross margin was up 111% year-on-year and 19% quarter-on-quarter to INR 251 crores, which is roughly about 25%, which 25% itself is a 700 basis points improvement year-on-year. But the biggest story for us, frankly, was the EBITDA improvement. EBITDA improved by 1,600 basis points year-on-year and 700 basis points quarter-on-quarter to land up at - 3 overall. So very strong performance there. The primary driver for us in the last couple of quarters has been operating leverage, which has really been driven on the back of expanding demand, particularly expanding demand for Rizta.
Q3 was the first time we crossed 500,000 units sold cumulatively ever, but Rizta's crossed 200,000 units sold within that. So it's been growing really fast and driving sales across the entire country for us. A few highlights from Q3. This was the first time we crossed 30,000 units registered and sold in a single month, which is the month of October, which also happened to be the highest-ever market share we have achieved till now, which was a comparatively still younger distribution footprint. This is certainly a fairly strong performance by our partners across the country. Distribution has continued to expand pretty much in line with what we had guided. We closed Q3 with 600 stores opened pan-India, and we are very much in line for opening 700 stores by the end of this fiscal.
Overall, for Q3, we achieved 18.8% market share, 67,800 units wholesale, up 22,000 units over same time last year. In fact, our actual registration count and actual units sold were materially higher at almost 72,000 units, and it was very efficient management of our channel inventory with our partners, which allowed us to reduce the channel inventory towards the end of the calendar year, which is why there's a considerably higher retail than actual wholesale benefit that should continue accruing for the next few months now. Breaking down this sales growth and sales performance, let me start from Middle India, which we've guided several times, has been the biggest focus of growth for us over the last entire year. Q3 was a very strong quarter. We added almost 3% market share, up from 14.6%-17.4% market share. Gujarat is holding up really well. We achieved 25% market share.
Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, all are performing incredibly well. In fact, Maharashtra was a big positive delight. We jumped up to 18.6% market share in Q3, our strongest performance to date. I do believe that there is some more juice to go here in Middle India as an entire geo for us. I'm particularly excited about Odisha, where we've seen our market share roughly double from 8.5%-almost 15% market share in the last couple of quarters. I believe that Odisha, in addition to Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, will continue contributing a lot in the coming months also. Coming to the rest of India, again, similar, strong success, strong growth. Our market share was up at 12.6%.
In fact, for the rest of India, while obviously I'm very bullish once we launch EL as a platform and its ensuing products, this kind of market share growth is extremely heartening with our existing portfolio itself. Very strong performance in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Rajasthan particularly. In fact, I would say places like Rajasthan and Punjab are starting to look like Middle India markets for us with 14%, 15%, 16% market shares there. We will continue investing in the rest of India, particularly preparing for EL's launch with more stores and more marketing in the coming quarters also. South, we have retained our leadership, and we have defended our market share really well. Despite very strong competitive intensity in the entire zone, we were yet again number one in the entire zone for the entirety of the quarter, ending with 24.4% market share.
Coming to gross margins, gross margins has been a very consistent story this entire fiscal. In Q3, we added 1% margin on account of superior revenue. We improved our margins by 1% on the back of reduction in COGS, and 1% margin improvement was down to us being able to claim subsidies better, leading to a 3% improvement in AGM compared to Q2, not just unit economics, but also EBITDA. Now, let me just put and before I get into the EBITDA story, let me just give some context. We believe that this year, there are some headwinds ahead for the industry, auto in general and EV specifically, in terms of commodities and potential risks to subsidies and potential pullbacks there. To better manage those, we've been working hard over the last few quarters, and we've been very disciplined with our fixed costs.
So while unit economics has improved and has been at a great place overall, we've also ensured that our fixed costs have been maintained really well to ensure that our overall EBITDA lands at a better place. This prepares us well for potential headwinds later this year so that our P&L can be protected even through that time. And that work is what you see reflected in numbers here. For example, in all of FY 2025, we improved our EBITDA by roughly about 1,300 bps. In just the three quarters of FY 2026, we've already improved our EBITDA by 1,400 bps. And we do believe that we will exit FY 2026 with an even stronger position given current trajectory. This EBITDA so Q3 EBITDA was at roughly about -INR 29 crores, about roughly -3%, just under 3%.
So there are a lot of reasons for us to be confident about operating leverage and because the growth outcomes because the growth outlook is strong on the back of the work we're doing with EL, the work we're doing with the new factory in AURIC. But there's another lever, which is specifically a strong Ather success, which is our non-vehicle revenue contribution. Typical legacy players, I think, would do about 15, 16, 17%. Ather's non-vehicle revenue is already up at 14% in Q3, which is obviously our highest ever. And this is despite our service revenues being obviously still very early stage because the installed fleet size is obviously limited. So we do believe that there is a lot of compounding possible on non-vehicle revenue. And given that most of the non-vehicle revenues end up accruing superior gross margins, the contribution to gross margins is much higher.
The largest contribution to non-vehicle revenue comes from the sale of software in the form of Pro Packs. I want to spend a few minutes on our software story today because we've launched a new version in the previous quarter, and there are a lot of launches ahead of us. This has overall contributed to a strong profitability or strong unit economics for us till date. Our software suite is broken over four different vectors of safety, navigation, convenience, and Ride Assist features. Safety features are features like Find My Scooter, Theft and Tow Alerts, Live Location Sharing. Navigation is things like Send Location via WhatsApp, Google Maps on dashboard, so on. Convenience are features like Ride Stories so you can track your vehicle usage, remote control over your vehicle. Ride Assist are features that alter your riding style, features like AutoHold, Traction Control, Magic Twist, so on.
While the financial performance of the software products is visible to most analysts on the street today, we also want to talk a little bit about all the work we're doing to ensure that consumers continue to really love the product because that word of mouth is important for continued success of this product. So, for example, if I were to share a few stats around usage, about 40% of our users use safety features like Live Location Sharing, Find My Scooter, at least once every month now. More than 50% of our users use onboard navigation, which is Google Maps, at least once every week. In fact, there are about 50,000 power users who use navigation every single day now. Ride Stories, which was a quirky feature we had built a while ago, today has 37% monthly average usage, MAU.
There are a lot of users who are truly hooked on to the mobile app because of this feature. Ride Assist is, however, the holy grail of what great software features should enable for the brand, which is extreme stickiness. That's what we are seeing. These are features that are unique to Ather. They've been built with a lot of deliberation. Once you start using them, it'll be very hard for you to switch products and go to another brand. These are features like Magic Twist, where you can use the throttle to brake, or Auto Hold, and so on and so forth. The stickiness of these features is insanely high now. 23% of our fleet uses Magic Twist every single day now. More than two-thirds of the fleet uses Auto Hold every single day now.
And it's stickiness like this that gives us the confidence to introduce more such features, with the latest release being that of Infinite Cruise, where with just one button, you can put your vehicle in cruise, and you don't need to do anything after that. Infinite Cruise was introduced a few months ago to our highest-end product, Ather 450 Apex. It's already seeing very similar stickiness as AutoHold and Magic Twist, with 31% DAU, daily active users, which is why recently we have now pushed Infinite Cruise to 40,000 more scooters, cementing the technology capabilities of the brand and the power of buying software because we can remotely upgrade your vehicle consistently and launch new features on it.
So together, this kind of ensures that not only are we seeing good outcomes out of our software financially, we are also investing in ensuring that there's strong product truth underlying these experiences so that people keep talking about them and more people recommend to each other that you should buy the Pro Pack within Ather. And it's not just product and tech, but also marketing, which is investing in creating this entire asset. So starting January, we have now started one of our bigger campaigns, which is called Life is Easy on an Ather, where we are celebrating what we call as magical experiences, often born out of this software: AutoHold, Magic Twist, Infinite Cruise, so on and forth. Outcome metrics, honestly, that's already public, so no surprises there. Very strong performance in Q3 with 91% attach rate for the software products.
Despite a roughly quarter pulling of our volumes over the last six quarters, the Pro Pack attach rates have been very consistent. We are investing more. In the coming months, there are features like Pothole Alerts, Voice on Ather, ParkSafe Alerts that are scheduled to go live, which should hopefully further enhance the value of this entire suite. On other sources, one big place of investment continues to be charging infrastructure for us, where we have consistently stayed ahead of the market. Ather runs the largest fast-charging network for electric two-wheelers in the country, with our total network size reaching 5,000 charging points as of 31st December. These are charging points operating on LECS, which is our charging protocol, now publicly available. And also, we've been able to successfully drive monetization of these charging points. So it's no longer really a pure-play cost center for us.
We are also able to monetize them quite responsibly. We had the multi-language dashboards, which really went quite viral and was a big marketing hit. Infinite Cruise, which I spoke about. Kids' helmets, which have just started scaling up now. We launched Rizta in the Sri Lankan market. We had already launched Rizta in the Nepal market a while ago. We've now further expanded that into Sri Lanka now. And finally, a recent announcement where we announced an entry into the auto insurance space. This is us getting into the value stream more in the middle of the value stream, taking over the administrative work around as an agent, as an insurance corporate agent. The primary reason for us to enter there was to take better control of the end-to-end consumer experience and deliver a delight feature there.
But we also expect the entire play to be margin accredited for the company. Finally, to just summarize the quarter, strong quarter at about INR 995 crores total income, 50% growth in units sold, 18.8% market share pan-India for the entire quarter, up almost 2.5 x since Q1 FY 2025, 600 stores pan-India, revenue from operations per unit hitting INR 1.4 lakhs, strong improvement in COGS, strong improvement in gross margin, AGM at 25%, and strong improvement in EBITDA, ending with -3% for the quarter. With that, I think I'm at the end of my walkthrough. We can now open it up to Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you so much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll begin with a question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchscreen telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. First question comes from the line of Nishit Jalan from Axis Capital. Please go.
Yeah, hi. Thank you for taking the question and congratulations on a good set of numbers. I have two or three questions, actually. Firstly, on the volume and the market share side, I think we seem to be doing much better than probably what you would have also hoped up a few months back. So just wanted to understand, this distribution network, we're expanding to 700 now. But how do you see that panning out in the next two, three years, right? And will distribution network be the biggest driver of our market expansion here on? Because still, our penetration is fairly low, and the gain is coming more from Middle India and the rest of the world, where we are adding distributors. So how do you see the potential of distribution expansion in the next two, three years? Second is on product side.
If you can share more thoughts here as to when should we see this platform getting launched and what kind of products you would look at from this platform? And will the product be initially manufactured in Hosur before moving to Aurangabad? And thirdly, on commodities side, I just wanted to understand, while we can see that aluminum, copper, and all have gone up, anything on EV-related products that you would want to highlight as to what kind of price movements or inflation and all that we might see? And what is our response in terms of price hikes that we have taken some and what we plan to take to kind of offset this? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Nishit. So let me just go sequentially. So what's the distribution potential? So I personally see distribution and the product portfolio being very intricately linked. You can't delink them and expand either and hope to get returns. So, for example, with the introduction of Rizta is where we started feeling that our distribution we have a fairly evolved model in the backend that helps us understand what kind of independent store has become viable with the existing portfolio. So we had estimated that about 600 and now 700 stores are independently viable comfortably with just Rizta and 450 alone. And honestly, with the expanding market, that number is going up. So there is still somewhat potential for distribution expansion for a few more quarters. It can't continue infinitely, which is where the next product plays a role.
EL is scheduled for launch later this year, which is the launch of EL, and that's leading into a second question. Obviously, I'm not sharing specific details about the product or its exact pricing or its exact positioning. But directionally, EL is a lower-cost architecture for us, which is something we can then use to lower our entry price points without losing our strong margin expectation. So we are going to use that. And with a better price point and a more flexible platform in EL, we believe the markets, particularly the North India markets, could open up materially to us. So along with EL is how we will look at expanding our distribution in sync with it. The next few quarters, I think there's still work to do just to sort of keep opening up what Rizta alone demands.
But by that point, EL comes in, and then EL starts another wave of future store opening. I do believe that 2,000 stores in the next few years is a pretty healthy ask and practically possible with the expanding portfolio. EL obviously will scale via AURIC, but we are looking at the exact timing, and we are open to starting EL out of the Hosur premises to de-risk potential timelines here because the product readiness is pretty much on time. So if required, we will be ready to start EL out of Hosur itself to get the initial traction going while we continue scaling it via AURIC. Finally, on commodities impact, honestly, I would love to tell you this is cyclical, and there's a very smart analyst with a great report who knows what's happening. I don't think anybody knows what's happening.
This is truly unprecedented in every way. There are a lot of commodities going haywire. Some of it is fundamental. Yes, there are some commodities that do seem to secularly be in a demand-supply gap. A lot of them probably are just they seem to be stuck in some sort of a hype situation right now. Now, even hype situations can last a couple quarters, so you can't exactly predict. So we are preparing for the worst. It's hard to say. I think it'll be a few percentage points of risk for the rest of the year. Something, hopefully, we'll be able to work with given our increasing scale. And particularly, EL is a good way to de-risk some of these commodities that are going haywire, particularly things like aluminum.
Yes, I think commodities are in a crazy space right now, and we all need to be very careful.
Thanks, Tarun. Just a couple of follow-ups. One, once the aluminum, copper, and all begin to price drift, anything related to EV components, battery-related cost, or basically electronics, or anything where also you have started to see inflation, or is it mostly the hard metals where we are seeing inflation? Secondly, I asked around price hikes, how much we have already taken so far, or any plans for further price hikes?
I think we'll delink them because I think price hikes can't be in isolation, can't be just purely linked to commodity risks. But to your specific points, I think the commodity stress is distributed over both auto and the battery side. We are seeing certain commodities on specific chemistries also going up. I would still say the battery side is a bit more manageable. It is the vehicle side which seems a little bonkers right now.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you so much. Our next question comes from the line of Kapil Singh from Nomura. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, Tarun. Congratulations to you and your team for a wonderful set of results. Firstly, on the cost side, just want to understand, as you look forward, where are the areas where you can reduce costs? Is it more coming from scale, or is it coming from some value engineering or innovations that you're doing? And just in terms of contribution, which of these areas has more potential? Just some color on that. And you mentioned that you will exit this year on a stronger note. It seems a little surprising given the commodity inflation we are seeing. So just some color on that as well, please.
Thanks, Kapil. So there's a cost reduction that can come further from. I do believe that our industry is still not at steady-state cost structures by any stretch. I think there is depending on the product, I feel there is like a 10%-20% long-term potential still easy in the cost structures. For us, the easiest opportunities are in the mechanical sides first, which is where a lot of the work on EL leads us to: a steel frame, more traditional in its sense, an enclosed gearbox instead of the current transmission design, and a few other manufacturing improvements. I hold an enormous amount of potential in easy and large cost reductions, more particularly aimed at Ather in the near term, let's say the next four to six quarters, I would say. There are certainly yet.
As scale gets in the 40,000-50,000 a month, I think they'll start becoming more and more visible. On the vendor side, instead of just calling them pure negotiation opportunities, I will reframe them as ME opportunities, manufacturing engineering, where getting into the details of the manufacturing process and that's the difference between ICE and EV today. A lot of the EV-specific designs haven't had the time to be perfected from a cost and specifically a process cost, logistics cost, inventory, and storage cost perspective. So there's a lot of flap. When you start getting the details of it, that can add up to several thousand INR. So I think this detailed work now will continue for the next several years, and there's a lot of long-term squeeze potential in the cost structures. But obviously, it requires work, which is what we are geared towards.
Did I answer all your questions? Kapil?
Yeah. I think.
Oh, sorry. YTD. So no, I was just indicating that YTD, we are at - 9% EBITDA. YTD, we are - 9%. So I do believe that by the exit of FY 2026, we would be better than negative 9% because the recent quarters, we've been performing better. So averaging out, we are taking the average down. So I think we'll average better. Yes, there are some commodity risks starting to build up, but I think we'll still be able to manage them at least in the short term.
Tarun, do you feel that there is more pricing power for you? One of the disadvantages, unfortunately, is that you don't have PLI. We are seeing in some of your competitors very strong PLI contribution. So is there scope to take up pricing as well over the next two years? And how do you think things evolve after FY 2028 when the PLI ends?
Kapil, you picked up my favorite topic. Actually, I want to reframe this for the street that us not having PLI is actually one of the strongest and one of the biggest reasons to be optimistic about us in the midterm because we are already operating on the most cleanest pricing principle. We don't have the risk of PLI changing our pricing architecture completely a few years later. PLI is not a 10-year policy. I would say not having PLI hurts, but I think that's a good pain to take right now to have a very, very, very resilient P&L in the next two, three years. Now, to your base question, is there more pricing power? We have been very disciplined about timely price hikes.
In fact, even in the start of this quarter, Q4, we have announced an INR 3,000 price hike, and we are managing that well. Obviously, price hikes are distributed across different geos. They're distributed across the base vehicle. So actually, one advantage that Ather has is that we have the levers of the base vehicle price and the AtherStack Pro price, right? So between these two levers, we can also distribute the price hike, giving consumers a little bit more flexibility and giving us better ability to land the message. So I think operating in a non-PLI world has made us incredibly creative and incredibly disciplined about pricing. And yeah, we've just taken a price hike, and I think we're managing it quite well.
Okay. Great. Any thoughts on what would be your monthly volume run rate for an EBITDA breakeven?
Kapil, sorry. We are not giving that guidance. I know it's a straightforward match, but from a company's perspective, we are not sharing guidance.
Okay. Thanks and best wishes. Look forward to a stronger Q4 as well.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chirag Jain from Emkay Global Financial Services. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity, and congratulations on a very strong performance.
Thanks, Chirag.
Just wanted to understand a bit more. You did mention that non-vehicle revenue contribution typically is 15%-17% for ICE companies, and we are already at 14% even though this service revenue is still at early stage. So what would be the steady-state non-vehicle revenue contribution, if you can highlight? That would be great as we see a maturity in terms of the business model.
Yeah. So I think software is already performing well, while there could be still somewhat juice left in the pricing there, but that's hard to predict. If we can maintain software's contribution to our non-vehicle revenue, I think that'll be terrific and fantastic, which we've been lucky enough to have pulled off for the last six quarters. But beyond software, actually, the good news is almost everything beyond software compounds basis your fleet size. Software is the only thing that we actually sell at retail, and it's linked to how much you retail that month. But if you look at spares and service revenue, that just compounds basis fleet size. And obviously, vehicles are going to stay for 10, 20 years. If you look at charging revenues, they compound basis fleet size. So there's a lot of upside available here.
Today, things like service spares barely add up to 2%-3% of our revenue. This is standard two-wheeler industry math. Those numbers are several times higher for legacy players. I think there's a lot of upside potential there in the next three to four years. Obviously, this is not like a two-quarter story, so you'll have difficulty modeling this in a quarter or two. If you take a three to four-year view, I think there's a lot of juice in the non-vehicle side for the company. There is, I would say, material upside available here.
Okay. Thank you. One question on the overall electric two-wheeler industry demand environment. We have already seen a cut on GST on ICE two-wheelers, plus probably we might have to take maybe a sharper price hike, as you also mentioned. Again, this INR 5,000 subsidy of PM E-DRIVE will expire by March. How do we see the demand environment for the electric two-wheeler industry for next financial year? I mean, we have already seen some correction, even though we have seen a comeback, but still not the pre-GST levels in terms of EV penetration.
Actually, I've been always of the opinion that I think the real growth in the EV two-wheeler industry has been masked because of a lot of vehicles below the INR 1 lakh price points, which kind of disappeared in the last one year. So if you were to model the industry as two different segments, products priced above a lakh and products priced below a lakh, the products priced above a lakh segment has grown at a beautiful growth rate over the last 18 months, 18, 21 months, six quarter, seven quarters. Products priced below a lakh has been shrinking at a very dramatic pace, which is why when you put the entire industry together, you've seen a more humble growth than what we feel as an operator here. Now, what's starting to change is I think a lot of that fluff in the sub-INR 1 lakh segment has disappeared.
I do not believe that the sub-INR 1 lakh segment does not exist. It does exist, and there is a segment, and there are buyers. And I do believe that from an industry's perspective, now there are good products priced fairly there, which means that segment's growth will also now be incremental. And the north of INR 1 lakh segment, in our assessment, is growing already well. You will see signs of it in the months of December and now January. December was, if I'm not wrong, almost 30%-40% up over the same time last year. Even January was, I think, about 20%-30% up over the same time last year. So we are now finally starting to see those 20%-30%-40% kind of month-on-month, sorry, year-on-year jumps that we've been seeing from one perspective.
But I think you will now start seeing that at a full industry level.
Thank you. And just lastly, on the e-motorcycle, any thoughts and any launch plans? Thank you.
We are still in an early stage. We are still evaluating it. Honestly, all hands on deck, completely occupied with the scooter segment right now, particularly with EL and its associated products. There is work happening on motorcycles, but nothing for me to announce or declare today.
Okay. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mukesh Saraf from Avendus Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity. My first question is, again, just relating to the Pro Pack and the fact that it actually remained quite high around the 90% mark, despite the fact that we are seeing growth in some of these states that will associate more with fair value-conscious customers, something like Odisha, for example. So just trying to understand, I mean, is this Pro Pack attach rate similar across these newer geographies that you're kind of seeing an increase in penetration, or is there some disparity between some of these, say, a southern market versus, say, some of these newer markets?
Thanks, Mukesh. So very good question and a pretty good story there also. You will notice a very small change, which will allow me to dig into and share it with you. From, I think, Q1 FY 2025 to Q3 FY 2026, over almost six quarters, Pro Pack attach rates have gradually inched up from 89% to now 91%. What's been happening underneath is south has been always very strong at roughly about 89% or 90% or 93%, even higher, actually, sorry, much higher than 90%. It was the non-south markets that used to have a lower Pro Pack attach rates.
In the last earnings call, I had highlighted that what we estimate is that as a store starts aging, as it starts clocking some time, if a store's been open up for a year or two, the first thing that starts happening is its Pro Pack attach rates start gradually inching up because the entire business model is new, not just for us, but also for our retail partners, right? They've never really been exposed to a model of selling a very, very high margin and a meaningfully expensive accessory of software with a two-wheeler. So initially, there's a lot of hesitation, a lot of lack of clarity at the retail partners' level in selling these Pro Packs. But over a few quarters, the math becomes obvious to them. So then they start properly upselling it, and that's when it starts taking off.
We've seen consistently that the longer the store remains open, higher is its Pro Pack attach rate. So, for example, in the western zone, Maharashtra, Gujarat, etc., we are now seeing pretty healthy and, frankly, quite satisfying Pro Pack attach rates. Definitely, Maharashtra, even Gujarat's getting there. MP, because of the pace of new store expansion, on average, you will see a softer growth. But if you were to separate stores out by vintage, you will see a very strong growth trajectory there also. Overall, at a high level, you give stores time, their Pro Pack attach rates go up, irrespective of whether they are in south, west, north, or east. So that seems to be a fairly dependable trend. Yes, there will be a 5%-10% delta between geos, depending on the economic indices of the geo, but nothing material.
Sure, sure, sure. Great. Thanks for that. Just in continuation with this, is it then fair to kind of say, I mean, again, vis-à-vis conventional thought process about, say, total cost of ownership parity between ICE and EVs, for your set of customers who are looking at, say, your products, that doesn't matter really anymore? Is it fair to kind of say that? Because they're willing to kind of spend this extra INR 10,000 odd for the Pro Pack, definitely not value-conscious there and definitely not looking at, say, an ICE cost of ownership parity with ICE.
Okay. Let me give you a different, let me give you a slightly different perspective for you to reframe this for yourselves. The total cost of owning and running an EV over, let's say, a 10-year period will be. Take the middle of our portfolio, something like a INR 130,000 product, add another INR 30,000-INR 40,000 on it on electricity, another INR 20,000-INR 30,000 for service. You're looking at roughly about INR 180,000-INR 190,000 as the total cost of operating an EV, the base EV. Compared to that, the cost of the software is about 6%. If you look at the usage, 6%-7%, whatever, right? If you look at actually what people actually use on an Ather scooter today, what features they spend their time on, honestly, I think we are massively over-delivering value in the software Pro Pack compared to the price that we are charging today.
I would argue that one of the largest chunks - not the largest, but one of the largest chunks - actually sits inside that pack there. It is only the alien nature of that product today in the market that is making us price it here. Otherwise, in theory, we should be charging more because that's where the consumer is actually deriving so much value out of. I would say that independently, the Pro Pack is very high value, which is why the attach rates are what they are. Does the total ownership cost matter for the end consumer? I think it always matters. I think it really doesn't vary by segment, not till these price points, at least. Sure, a INR 3 lakh-INR 4 lakh bike might behave differently, but a INR 1 lakh-INR 1.5 lakh scooter buyer, I think the total cost of ownership matters.
The thing is, I would also say it is post-purchase rationalization. You buy the vehicle because you really, really fall in love with it, and then you rationalize it to yourselves and to your friends and to your social circles that, "Listen, yeah, I know it's expensive, but listen, I save like INR 30,000 on petrol every year, man. What are you talking about?" Luckily for us, the savings compared to petrol are just so humongous that even with a 450 Apex at INR 1.9 lakh, I think you can still feel happy about where you will land up financially. I think the fundamental truth is just astoundingly strong.
Got it. Got it. Great, great. Thank you. Thanks a lot for those detailed answers.
Sure.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Amyn Pirani from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Just to follow up on the Pro Pack discussion that we just had, so a clarification, can people who buy just the vehicle come back at a later date and still buy the Pro Pack, and does the pricing change? How does it work?
Yes, you can. But we obviously want to encourage you buying upfront because we do believe that if you don't buy upfront, you're not just experiencing the Pro Pack; you're not experiencing all the value out of it. And if you're not experiencing something and you don't know about it, how will you come back? So we price the products differentially. If you buy it along with retail, it's a lower-priced product. Post-retail, I think we bump up the price 30% or something, so it's more expensive to buy. So we really, really want to ensure that for a new product like this, we don't have you wait because then you may not think of coming back.
Okay. Okay. Just wanted to also talk about something that you discussed last time also. Is there any update from the government on the rollout of ABS, and what is the kind of discussions you are having on your own version of the EBS, which obviously, as we talked about last time, was potentially even more effective and less costly than the ABS?
So we've been engaged with the relevant ministries and policymakers. We are also aware that this is a hard ask because I think we lack branding. I think it's been very rare that for a globally famous technology like ABS, an Indian alternative would emerge. So there's a lot of, honestly, a lot of advocacy work required here. We are committed to it, and we do think that there is merit in pushing this. But for now, I think a base assumption is that this is an add-on as opposed to an immediate replacement for something like ABS.
Okay. But any timelines on, because earlier, ABS was supposed to happen on January 26, which seemed very ambitious, but is there any revised timelines which are coming from the government on that?
We haven't heard of a revised timeline. We do know, obviously, it's deferred, but we don't know till when. It actually works better for us because if, without mandate, we can offer people the option of an EBS in our future products, I think that'll be a good win for Ather.
Okay. Great. I'll come back in the queue. Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks, Amyn.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Nitin Arora from Axis Mutual Fund. Please go ahead.
Hi, Tarun. Thanks for answering all the questions mostly. Just on your EL platform, when you talk about the lower cost structure, can you talk a little bit in terms of mix, do you see that cannibalization? Because that was the risk everyone was building in. And when you talked about Rizta, it looked like cannibalization is not seen anywhere now. So can you talk about a little bit trends, how this volume ramp-up has happened and no cannibalization we are not seeing?
Hi, Nitin. So sorry, your question is that why did we not see cannibalization of 450 with Rizta, or what will happen with Rizta post-EL?
Post-EL.
Okay. So there was, by the way, some cannibalization of 450 with Rizta, by the way. But yes, on balance, it just incrementally added a ton of more volume, so everybody's happy, and that's great. With EL, we do expect that there will be some cannibalization. It'll also depend on the exact positioning of the first EL product, its pricing, its feature sets, but there will be some cannibalization. Now, unlike 450 and Rizta, if there is cannibalization here, actually, as a company, we are happy because EL has underlying better cost structures. So any customer who ends up choosing EL over Rizta of their own free will actually helps us make more money out of it. So I don't think we mind it.
This is one of the best scenarios to be in as far as cannibalization is concerned, which is why we are not overtly worried about, "Okay, what happens if there's cannibalization?" In fact, we have the opinion if there's cannibalization, great. Our margins actually improve even further than what we anticipated.
Thank you very much. Thanks.
Nitin, on overall volume expansion, so we expect EL to be able to expand volume because of two primary reasons. First, it'll allow us to introduce more products in segments where we are already strong. So we will be able to cover the market even more comprehensively, ensuring that we continue our strong dominant market shares in those price segments. But there are price segments, particularly in the INR 1 lakh-INR 1.25 lakh range, where, including the price of our Pro Pack today, we practically don't have a product. We believe EL will allow us that white space entry and a healthy market share gain, all of which is new and incremental and is not even real cannibalization. So we expect volume expansion to happen because of these two approaches.
Thank you, Tarun. Very helpful. Thank you.
Yeah, Nitin.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vijay Pandey from Nuvama Wealth Management. Please go ahead.
Awesome. Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations for an excellent quarter. I have a couple of questions. One was on our gross margin. So basically, I wanted to understand how our bill of material has moved from 55.4 to 25 to right now. What is, as a percentage of total cost or total battery cost? And what is the—and how much is the battery price of that component beyond?
Right. So Vijay, we've shared this detail. From FY 2025 to YTD FY 2026, three-quarters FY 2026, BOM has reduced by roughly about 8%, roughly over INR 10,000, from an average weighted average BOM of INR 120,000 to roughly about INR 110,000, INR 111,000 by now. So that's the improvement we have seen, FY over FY, full FY to nine months this FY. How much is the cost of battery? Well, I'll skip the cost of battery pack because that is a lot of detail, but at a cell level, the total cost of cells as a function of the total bill of material is below 20% now. I can't share the exact number, and also, honestly, it depends variant to variant, but it's generally below 20% as a safe estimate these days.
And in FY 2024, it was generally how much?
FY 2024 to FY 2025 was also a big drop. FY 2024, it was INR 1.48 lakh, which fell down by 19% to INR 1.2 lakh in FY 2025, which has fallen further by 8% in nine months of FY 2026 to INR 110,000.
Okay. I was actually looking for the battery as a percentage of BOM cost for FY 2024.
Sorry, I apologize. I advised you won't remember that. I do remember that for the last few quarters, the cost of cells has been sub-20, but the rest I won't be able to pull out.
Secondly, sir, I wanted to check about the software mix. So how do you see the non-vehicle revenues around 13%? What will be the software component of this? And are we seeing any deviation in terms of software revenues when we consider the higher-priced model and the lower-priced model between Rizta and 450s?
So the price of Pro Packs is generally quite similar between 450 and Rizta variants. I would say, without sharing exact details, roughly about half of the non-vehicle revenue or in that vicinity comes from sale of Pro Packs.
I meant the adoption rate. Adoption rate of software between.
Quite similar. If you think about it, Rizta is the majority of what we sell. 91% is the attach rate for the product. There's not too much leeway for differential attach rates at this point. They're quite similar.
Okay. Okay. Lastly, sir, if you can just please give a little bit of information about the charging unit economics of the charging station because no one else does it in India, so it'll be great if you can a little bit share about how that profitability or how the revenue realization is coming, and can we expect any profitability from that segment?
I'm sorry, I don't have that information handy, so I'll have to skip that for now.
Okay. Okay. Thank you. I'll fall back in with you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Pratithi from Param Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello?
Hi.
Hello. Am I audible? Yeah.
Yes.
I had a question. Based on the volume numbers that were given in the revenue, the ASP comes to around INR 1.4 lakh. Am I right on that?
Yes, you are. We've also shared the same in our presentation uploaded online.
Okay. Great. Also, one more thing. I think we've spoken about how LFP batteries will be moving towards, and that would help our gross margins. So has that happened, and how do we see the gross margin improvement in this quarter?
LFP has already played a material role over the last several quarters and has helped improve our unit economics over the last few quarters. The last part of the gain is already factored in. There could still be some upside as the variant skew evolves a little bit, but I would say the majority of that upside is already factored in.
Okay. Also, battery as a service is something that we were supposed to do. So have we started that? And if yes, how many of the units sold out of 68,000 opted for this service?
It's really telling that the state does not even know that the product is live. The feedback will be shared with our sales teams. But honestly, we looked at BaaS first and foremost as a strong marketing lever for us, which I think it's played an okay kind of a role for us. It has fairly small attach rates today. It looks like once consumers come in, they end up opting for other plans and not necessarily BaaS. Also, retail finance is already more than 50% of our consumers already opt for retail financing. And maybe that's why BaaS attach rates are low because if you are anyways opting for an EMI, then you may not honestly need a BaaS.
Understood. Also, there has been this supply chain ban on magnets from China. So how has that impacted our supply chain, if anything?
That's behind us. The ban impacted our sales in Q2. Q3 onwards, we have had no material impact because of the ban. The ban expired in October.
Okay. So now the supply chain is back on track?
Yes.
Okay. All right. Thank you so much. Congratulations on a great set of numbers.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Manish Ostwal from Nirmal Bang. Please go ahead.
Yes, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. I have only one question. Most of the questions already you answered. Sir, on export side, any strategy we have over the medium term? Can you comment on that?
So right now, we've done a limited experiment with Nepal and Sri Lanka, where we have seen encouraging results. Particularly with EL as a platform, we are optimistic about international markets. The longer wheelbase and the opportunity to add bigger wheels works well for certain markets. In the near term, there's not a lot to share, but if you take a few years outlook, international expansion will likely be a considerable piece of a considerable growth driver for us, but not in the short term, not in the next, let's say, 12 months because you open up a market, and it'll take a few years to warm up and start contributing. So think of that as a more mid- to long-term growth lever.
Yes, sir. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time, that was the last question for today. I would like to hand the conference over to Mr. Murali for the closing comments. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you. We sincerely appreciate all of you joining us today and for your continued engagement and support. We look forward to updating you on our developments in the upcoming quarters. Wishing you all a pleasant week ahead. Thank you.
Thank you so much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Ather Energy Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.