Multilevel inverter had been paid a lot of attention from the academia and research community in recent times due to its role in high and medium power applications. In this paper, a detailed survey is made on the recently designed multilevel inverter to find the suitability of the inverters for particular applications. Research is performed on various types of multilevel inverters such as: Symmetric, asymmetric, hybrid and modularized multilevel inverter in order to identify the issues in generating more levels at the output. A summary of various issues in multilevel inverter with reduced switch count is provided, so that a novel topology of multilevel inverter can be designed in future. Further, an 81-level switched ladder multilevel inverter using unidirectional and bidirectional switches is designed. Simulation work is carried out using Matlab/Simulink in order to validate the performance of the inverter with change in resistive load and impedance load. The output of the 81-level inverter is fed to a 110 V, 186.5 W single phase induction motor in order to study the characteristics, further speed control of motor is performed by varying the input voltage of the motor and the results are presented.