In this paper, the beam lifetime measurement and its theoretical analysis are presented using measured vacuum pressure and applied radio frequency (RF) cavity voltage in Indus-2 electron storage ring at 2 GeV beam energy. Experimental studies of the effect of RF cavity voltage and bunched beam filling pattern on beam lifetime are also presented. An equation of stable beam current decay is evolved and this equation closely follows the observed beam current decay pattern. It shows that the beam is stable and the beam current decay is due to the beam–residual gas interaction (vacuum lifetime) and electron–electron interaction within a bunch (Touschek lifetime). The estimated vacuum, Touschek and total beam lifetimes from analytical formulations are also compared with the measured beam lifetime.