Ola Electric on Thursday said it has raised over $200 million (about `1,484.7 crore) in funding from Falcon Edge, SoftBank and others, valuing the company at $3 billion (about `22,272 crore). With the fresh fund infusion, Ola said it will accelerate development of other vehicle platforms, including electric motorbike, mass market scooter and electric car.
The funding will further strengthen Ola’s ‘mission electric’ that urges the industry and consumers to commit to electric and ensure that no petrol two-wheelers be sold in India after 2025, it added. “We are proud to lead the EV revolution from India to the world. India has the talent and the capability to build technologies of the future for the industries of the future for the entire world. I thank our existing investors and welcome new ones to Ola,” Ola chairman and group CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said.
In July, Ola Electric had announced signing a $100-million (about `744.5 crore) 10 year-term debt financing agreement with Bank of Baroda. In the past, Ola Electric has raised funding from investors, including Tiger Global and Matrix India.
Earlier this month, Ola had stated that the sales of its S1 electric scooters crossed `1,100 crore in two days. The two e-scooters — Ola S1 and S1 Pro — were unveiled in August this year. The purchase window will reopen in November.
Ola has completed phase-I construction of its manufacturing plant, spread across 500 acres, in Tamil Nadu. The company had announced an investment of `2,400 crore for the facility. The factory will be run entirely by women and employ over 10,000 at full scale. The company had earlier stated that it would initially start with 10 lakh annual production capacity and then scale it up to 20 lakh, in line with market demand, in the first phase.
Ola Electric had claimed that its plant — when fully completed — would have an annual capacity of 1 crore units, “that is 15% of the world’s entire total two-wheeler production”.
