Ather Energy’s e-scooter – S340 – is powered by a battery that charges within an hour

India is the world’s second largest market for two-wheelers, and more than 14 million two-wheelers were sold last year. But electric scooters, so far, aren’t too big a part of that pie. When electric two-wheelers were first introduced nearly a decade ago, companies were betting big. They had a brief honeymoon period between 2008 and 2010, with sales more than doubling during that time. But all that dwindled once the government slashed its Rs22,000 ($346) subsidy for lithium battery packs in 2012. From selling 100,000 units two years ago, sales plunged to 21,000 units by 2014. But Ather Energy is bent on revising the trend.

For four years, Tarun Mehta and Swapnil Jain slogged for hours in their dorm rooms, working on prototypes of devices ranging from clean combustion engines to efficient battery packs. By the time they graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) in 2012, their dream of building an e-bike had slowly begun taking shape. “We discovered that this was a dying industry,” 25-year-old Mehta told Quartz. “People weren’t buying electric two-wheelers anymore as they were severely disappointed by the product. The scooters would take eight hours to charge and came with a top speed of 25km/hr—people almost run at that speed!”

It seemed the time was right to enter the industry as others were slowly scaling down their production and even planning on leaving the market. So, in April 2013, with virtually no financial capital at their disposal, Mehta and Jain quit their corporate jobs and began building Ather Energy. The plan was to design prototypes of electric two-wheelers that could potentially compete with the speed and durability of the conventional scooters that the country had fallen in love with.

Two years later, the duo has created an e-scooter—the S340—whose battery charges within an hour. “It is faster than your mobile charging time,” said Mehta. Over the last few months, this promising technology has also attracted funding from institutional investors, as well as prominent entrepreneurs, including the founders of Flipkart—Sachin and Binny Bansal.