India’s Ola Electric eyes higher sales with affordable e-scooters

The government wants this to grow to 70% by 2030 and is offering incentives to boost sales.

Ola has launched cheaper scooters through a new generation platform, reducing production costs by 25%, founder and Chief Executive Bhavish Aggarwal told Reuters.

The company, which first began selling electric scooters in 2021 and competes with start-ups like Ather Energy, leads the e-scooter market with a 32% share. Valued at $5 billion last year, Ola sold around 95,000 e-scooters from April-August 2023, industry data showed.

While the new models will boost Ola’s market share, Aggarwal said his focus is to increase EV penetration in India and wants electric models to comprise the majority of scooter sales by next year.

“Our goal is eventually to bring the upfront price of an EV equal to internal combustion engine models … without any government incentives.”The IPO-bound company also plans to expand its plant’s annual production capacity to 2 million units from 500,000 currently, and double the number of experience stores to 2,000.

Ola recorded an operating loss of $136 million on a revenue of $335 million in the fiscal ended March 2023, Reuters reported.

However, Aggarwal said the business has “scaled very well” so far and expects financials to be better. He did not specify a timeline.

Ola also said it has opened 100 more service centres across India, taking the tally to 500.