For most wheelchair users in India, going out means asking for help — a transfer into a car, an auto-rickshaw, a wait for someone free to drive. NeoMotion, a startup incubated at IIT Madras, built its way around that problem entirely: a wheelchair made to fit the person, and a motorised clip-on that turns it into a road-ready vehicle in seconds, with no transfer at all.
The system has two parts, designed together. NeoFly is a personalised wheelchair built around the user’s own body measurements, health assessment and lifestyle, with 18 customisation options covering seat width and depth, backrest height and angle, armrest and footrest positions, and even the rear wheel position. The company says the rigid frame, ergonomic push rim and correct posture let a user cover three to five times more distance with every push than a conventional wheelchair, while a footprint about 30 percent smaller makes lifts, bathrooms and narrow lanes accessible. At around 16 kilograms on average, it folds for travel in a car or auto-rickshaw, and every chair ships with a pressure-relief cushion and safety anti-tippers.
Clip on, and the road opens up
NeoBolt is the part that changes the day. The motorised attachment clips onto NeoFly in 20 to 30 seconds, independently, with low effort — and the user is suddenly driving a vehicle built for Indian roads. The company says its BLDC hub motor, telescopic suspension and two-wheeler-style controls — accelerator, brakes, horn, headlight, side indicators and a seatbelt — carry it over potholes, mud roads, gravel and speed breakers, and up slopes of up to 8 degrees. A swappable lithium-ion battery gives up to 30 kilometres per charge and recharges in about four hours from a household plug point, and a speed-limit regulator starts new users at 7 kmph before stepping up to 15 and then 25 kmph. No driving licence is needed, and the user can park the attachment outside and roll into a classroom, office or mall on NeoFly alone.
Born in a lab, proven on Indian streets
NeoMotion grew out of the TTK Center for Rehabilitation Research and Device Development at IIT Madras, led by Professor Sujatha Srinivasan, and was co-founded by her with alumnus Swostik Sourav Dash, the company’s CEO. The team spent years studying how wheelchair users actually live — the pain from a badly fitted chair, the energy lost to every push, the independence lost to every transfer — and built NeoFly and NeoBolt as the answer. The company says more than 5,000 people with disabilities across India now move independently with its products, and its revenue reached about Rs. 22.2 crore in 2024-25, up from Rs. 17.6 crore the year before.
The reach keeps widening. In 2022 the company launched its Livelihood on Wheels programme, training and onboarding wheelchair users equipped with NeoFly and NeoBolt as delivery partners for companies like Zomato and Amazon. Mobis India Foundation has partnered with NeoMotion twice under its Accessibility and Freedom initiative — first for 500 beneficiaries, and in March 2026 for 600 more wheelchair users across eight states and union territories in a Rs. 6.3 crore programme. The startup also won Rs. 1 crore on Shark Tank India Season 2, and has since expanded its lineup with products like NeoStand, an electric standing wheelchair.
That is the real story of NeoMotion. It did not set out to build a better wheelchair in the abstract — it built a mobility system around the person sitting in it, and then gave that person the road. A chair that fits, a motor that clips on, and a user who no longer has to ask for a ride: that is Indian engineering measured not in specifications, but in freedom.
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