Over 92% Of India Still Runs On Traditional Fuels: Says Nawgati’s Vaibhav Kaushik

As India speeds ahead on its journey toward cleaner and smarter mobility, much of the attention is on electric vehicles. But Vaibhav Kaushik, Co-founder and CEO of Nawgati, believes the real transformation lies in bridging the gap between today’s fuel reality and tomorrow’s electric future. In a country where over 92 per cent of vehicles still rely on petrol, diesel, and CNG, Nawgati is redefining how fuel stations operate: using data, technology, and real-time insights to reduce inefficiencies, cut emissions, and prepare the infrastructure for a future where EVs will be the norm.

In this exclusive conversation with Utkarsh Agarwal, Editorial Lead at BW Auto World, Kaushik talks about the inspiration behind Nawgati, the everyday inefficiencies it’s solving, and how the company’s tech stack is built to power everything from traditional pumps to EV charging stations. From improving wait times to enabling predictive analytics, Nawgati is not just fixing a legacy problem, it's building a platform that fuels both today's needs and tomorrow's ambitions.

Read excerpts below:

Q. How would you define Nawgati’s role in India’s evolving mobility ecosystem, especially as the EV narrative dominates headlines?

At Nawgati, we see ourselves as a partner that enables fuel consumers to find and access energy, whether it's petrol, diesel, CNG, or electricity, in a rapidly diversifying mobility ecosystem. While EVs are rightly gaining traction, the reality is that over 92 per cent of India’s mobility still runs on traditional fuels. We are on a mission to empower fuel providers with the technology to become future-ready, digitise and optimise their operations, ensuring that they don’t fall behind as India is actively adopting EVs and other alternative fuels like CNG.

Moreover, our platform acts as the bridge between fuel stations and consumers, providing real-time visibility and operational intelligence. By doing so, we bridge the gap between legacy infrastructure and modern expectations around convenience, efficiency, and data-driven decision-making. Our role is to future-proof fuel stations, making them smarter, faster, and more responsive. Especially because the world is moving towards EVs, and the digital infrastructure we've built will also seamlessly extend to charging stations. As we actively onboard fuel stations on our platform, we are also building the foundational tech layer that will support all kinds of mobility.

Q. What inspired you and your co-founders to target the fuel station experience - a problem most people accept as inevitable?

Nawgati was born out of a very real, everyday problem that I witnessed firsthand, back in 2019, while I was interning in Noida. During my commute between my home in Greater Noida and the office, I regularly took Ola and Uber rides, and most of these cabs run on compressed natural gas (CNG).

Every time we passed a CNG station, I couldn’t help but notice the long, exhausting queues and people spending 30 to 40 minutes on average waiting in line. It intrigued me how much time and money people wasted standing in these queues and how much they could save if they knew about other CNG stations on their route without rerouting a lot.

During one of the rides, I struck up a conversation with the cab driver, and he told me that he could have made at least 10 per cent of his daily earnings during this waiting period, but he couldn’t just because he had to stand in this queue for a fuel-up.

That conversation was the spark. I realised this wasn’t just an inconvenience; it was a deep inefficiency affecting thousands of livelihoods. I took this insight to my co-founders, Aalaap and Aryan.

While none of us had fuel-tech experience, we knew we had the technical know-how to build a solution that could have a real-world impact. That’s how Nawgati came to life - to transform fuel station operations with smart, data-driven solutions and make life better for both providers and consumers.

Q. How do you see Nawgati contributing to the clean mobility conversation, even though you operate within the traditional fuel space?

Clean mobility isn’t just about electric vehicles or clean energy; it is also about reducing waste, improving efficiency, and optimising legacy systems that will still be in use for the next decade or more. Nawgati is working for both sides of the fueling chain, providers and consumers, through its Nawgati Fueling App and Aaveg platform. We contribute by bringing transparency and digital control to the traditional fuel supply chain.

By cutting idle times, managing congestion, and improving throughput at fuel stations, we’re actively reducing unnecessary emissions associated with long wait times and mismanaged logistics. Additionally, we are empowering the fuel station to manage and optimise its resources using real-time analytics, which further reduces wastage.

More importantly, the same digital infrastructure we’ve built for traditional fuels can power EV charging stations. Our platform-agnostic architecture allows for seamless integration with EV partners, ensuring continuity in user experience and operational efficiency. By making current systems cleaner and laying the groundwork for the infrastructure of tomorrow, we're enabling a more sustainable ecosystem.

Q. Could you walk us through how your Aaveg Dashboard and apps work on the ground? What technologies power Nawgati's real-time insights?

The Aaveg dashboard is a complete retail ops platform that empowers fuel station operations, offering fuel companies and station owners real-time data on queue lengths, dispenser performance, resource allocation, transaction counts, and a lot more. At the station level, we install an edge controller that integrates with the existing CCTV systems and dispenser infrastructure. This controller processes data in real time, tracking congestion, monitoring compliance, and analysing forecourt operations, and then securely transmits the processed results to our cloud platform. The Aaveg dashboard turns these insights into an intuitive interface for station operators, helping them manage queues, maintain operational efficiency, and improve customer experience on a daily basis.

We've built the stack to be modular, scalable, and hardware-agnostic so it can be deployed anywhere from high-traffic metro areas to Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns. The result is a real-time, intelligent decision-making layer that makes fuel access smarter for everyone. Additionally, the Aaveg dashboard enables fuel station owners to make strategic decisions around fuel consumption patterns, saving time and money.

For the general public, the Nawgati app delivers live updates on fuel availability, directions to the nearby station, and service times, enabling them to better plan their refueling stops. By combining edge processing, cloud analytics, and real-time data integration, we are creating a more transparent, efficient, and user-friendly fueling experience for both providers and end consumers.

Q. How do you collect, secure, and leverage data from fuel stations without compromising user privacy or station operations?

Privacy and operational continuity are core to Nawgati’s approach. First, we don’t collect any personally identifiable information (PII) - our systems monitor vehicle flow and station activity, not individuals. Our edge controller, installed at each station, connects to existing CCTV systems and dispenser infrastructure, processes the data locally, and only transmits aggregate insights to the cloud, minimising risk and exposure.

Our B2B platform, Aaveg, is built with top-end cybersecurity measures. We use state-of-the-art data encryption technologies to ensure all transmission between the edge hardware and the cloud is fully secure. Additionally, our role-based access control (RBAC) system restricts access so that only authorised personnel can view or manage data within their defined scope, adding an extra layer of resilience against potential breaches or attacks.

We comply with global data security standards and regularly audit our systems to stay ahead of evolving privacy norms. Importantly, our deployment is designed to integrate smoothly into station operations without causing downtime or disruption. By transforming raw, unstructured data into actionable, anonymised intelligence, we empower fuel providers and station managers to optimise performance, reduce bottlenecks, and improve strategic decision-making, all while safeguarding privacy and operational trust.

Q. What are some key learnings or unexpected challenges you faced while scaling Nawgati's platform in Delhi-NCR?

Nawgati started its operations from Delhi NCR, and its high traffic, diverse station formats, and competitive environment made it an ideal testing ground from day 1. This has greatly helped us refine our model.

One significant learning was that technology alone isn’t enough; to drive real adoption, we needed to build deep relationships and trust with on-ground staff, understand station-level workflows, and adapt to their realities.

Since Nawgati’s platform is an industry first, there were naturally teething issues - from hardware deployment challenges in legacy infrastructures to working around inconsistent internet connectivity, resistance to technology, and power fluctuations.

But what stood out was how receptive the industry has been. The product’s merit and positive impact on operations across fuel stations made our partners eager to deploy it across their networks as quickly as possible. That urgency helped resolve many on-ground challenges collaboratively and in real time. Moreover, it also encouraged us to look at their problem more deeply and build solutions with better knowledge that are ready to use.

We also learned the value of customisation - not all stations face the same problems. Some needed better crowd management, while others required improved dispatch coordination or inventory tracking.

Lastly, managing stakeholders, from fuel providers to regulators, taught us the importance of long-term thinking, credibility, and clear communication. Scaling in Delhi NCR ultimately sharpened our operational agility and prepared us to expand nationally with a robust, field-tested platform.

Q. What is Nawgati’s business model? Do fuel companies pay a licensing fee or a subscription, or is it performance-linked?

Nawgati operates on a B2B SaaS subscription model designed specifically for fuel companies and station networks. We offer a subscription starting at a nominal monthly fee of 5000 per station, with which fuel providers can deploy our Aaveg platform across as many outlets as they choose. The subscription is flexible: station owners can opt for the full suite of features or select specific modules tailored to their operational needs, giving them control over cost and functionality.

On the consumer side, our Nawgati Fueling app offers basic features that are free to all users, with paid premium features currently in development. Beyond these core streams, we’re also expanding into new revenue opportunities. We’re set to launch a congestion data API by the end of the year, providing fleet operators with actionable insights to reduce vehicle downtime.

We see Nawgati not just as a product, but as a growing platform. As we scale, we aim to unlock even more value for stakeholders across the mobility ecosystem, from fuel providers to fleet operators, creating a multi-sided business model with both subscription and data-driven service layers.

Are you also looking at collaborating with EV charging infrastructure players as the ecosystem matures?

Absolutely. The transition to EVs is not a question of if but when, and we want to be part of that evolution from the start. Moreover, we believe that the future of mobility will be mixed, which means that petrol, diesel, CNG, LPG, and EVs will all coexist for years to come. We are building a fuel-agnostic platform that doesn’t differentiate between the type of energy being dispensed, whether it is a litre of diesel or a kilowatt-hour of electricity. We’ve designed our tech stack to integrate with electric vehicle (EV) charging hardware and software systems-we can integrate seamlessly with both traditional fuel infrastructure and electric vehicle (EV) charging networks.

On the discovery side, we’re already partnering with standalone EV charging stations as well as fuel stations that have added EV charging to their forecourts. Our technology helps these operators monitor congestion, optimise throughput, and improve the customer experience - the same way we do for petrol, diesel, or CNG stations.

As the EV ecosystem matures, we see Nawgati playing a key role as the intelligence layer that connects and optimises diverse energy networks. Whether it’s managing queues, predicting demand, or supporting fleet integration, our goal is to make energy access - in any form - smarter, more efficient, and frictionless for everyone involved.

Q. With Delhi’s EV Policy 2.0 pushing sustainable transport, how do you see policy frameworks shaping opportunities for companies like yours?

Policies like Delhi’s EV Policy 2.0 are important because they don’t just encourage more EVs, they are creating a sustainable environment for the future to come. Moreover, the current policy goals such as increasing public charging points to 3,500 by 2025 and 13,700 by 2030, and making sure there’s at least one charging or battery swapping station in every square kilometer, could create real opportunities for companies like Nawgati.

To manage this scale, operators will need smart data, better queue management, and smooth operations, and that’s exactly where we’ll be able to help. As a fuel-agnostic platform, we’ll be the first to help new EV charging stations join our Aaveg analytics system, giving them better tools to track congestion, compliance, and performance.

Overall, strong policies will lower the barriers for digital solutions and push faster partnerships between government, startups, and big players. We’re excited to help cities like Delhi move toward a cleaner, smarter future, one station at a time.

Q. Beyond Delhi-NCR, which cities or regions are you targeting next, and why?

After proving the strength of our model in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai, some of the most complex and high-pressure urban regions, we are now expanding into other major cities like Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and parts of Madhya Pradesh. These cities are natural next steps because they combine high fuel demand, dense traffic, and forward-thinking operators eager for solutions that improve throughput, reduce wait times, and enhance customer experience.

But we’re not stopping at big metros. Our goal is national: we aim to cover fuel stations across the country, including Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities where operational inefficiencies often go unnoticed but have a massive cumulative impact. Nawgati’s congestion management tools and compliance monitoring systems can deliver outsized value, improving station productivity and customer satisfaction.

Our approach is both data-driven and partnership-focused, as we assess fuel station density, local pain points, and operator readiness before rolling out. The ultimate goal is to create clusters of smart, connected stations that drive meaningful impact at scale, positioning Nawgati as the go-to fuel-tech platform across India’s evolving mobility landscape.