Gati Drives builds rare-earth-free electric motors for Indian appliance and HVAC manufacturers

Most of the motors inside Indian fans, coolers and exhaust systems use a design that has changed very little in a century. Induction motors are cheap and robust, and they waste a large share of the electricity they draw as heat.

The efficient alternative is the brushless direct current motor, which needs permanent magnets made from rare-earth elements. Those magnets are largely imported, and China’s export controls on rare-earth materials have made supply a point of concern for Indian manufacturers. That has left appliance makers choosing between cost and efficiency.

Gati Drives was founded in 2023 by Suyash Mishra and Gajendra Jain, who had previously worked as founding engineers at Naxatra Labs and Motorama, designing rare-earth-free brushless motors for electric mobility. Mishra, the CEO, took his degree in electrical engineering from IITRAM in 2022.

The company operates as Gatix Drive Pvt. Ltd. from a unit at Unique Industrial Park on the GIDC Vatwa Ramol Road in Ahmedabad, an industrial estate on the eastern edge of the city. Building motors in Gujarat puts it close to the appliance and pump manufacturing base it is selling into.

Ferrite magnets and a self-starting design

Gati Drives builds what it calls Slip Synchronous Permanent Magnet motors, or SSPM, a design the company describes on its website as patented. It uses ferrite magnets made in India in place of rare-earth magnets, and the company says its controllers run on indigenous RISC-V microcontrollers.

The company sells two units. The GD60 is a 60-watt motor rated at 230 or 400 volts, running at 1450 or 2800 revolutions per minute, with efficiency the company states as 92% or better. A larger GD90 is listed alongside it, which the website credits with 94% efficiency.

Gati Drives says the design is easier to repair than a brushless motor, because damaged components can be replaced individually rather than requiring the whole unit to be swapped. The company lists HVAC systems, air coolers, exhaust and ventilation, and robotics and automation as target applications.

In an April 2026 interview with Circuit Digest, Mishra said the company had developed motors rated up to 200 watts, aimed at the appliance sector, and that industrial applications would follow as the technology matured. He described the company as being at the stage where the market would judge the product.

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From free samples to a production line

Gati Drives announced a pre-seed round led by Campus Fund on 23 January 2026. The announcement did not disclose the amount. The company said the money would go towards manufacturing scale-up, hiring, and completing the certifications needed for commercial deployment.

The route to market has been direct. Mishra told Indian Startup Times that the company supplied free sample motors to original equipment manufacturers and asked them to compare energy use and output against their existing units, rather than leading with performance claims.

Sales outreach runs through IndiaMART and LinkedIn to appliance manufacturers, and the company has stayed out of consumer e-commerce. Gati Drives said in February 2026 that commercial production had begun and that its Ahmedabad plant was set up for a capacity of about 5,000 motors a month.

Richa Bajpai, who founded Campus Fund, said the investment backed a founding team with technical expertise in motor research at a point where energy efficiency, supply chain independence and cost were converging. The fund invests in student-led ventures.

The January announcement had put pilot production at 1,000 to 2,000 units a month by early 2026, with fans, pumps and eventually electric vehicle motors named as later markets. Mishra said in February that the company expected to raise again within two to three months.

(This story has been researched and compiled using publicly available information.)