Ola Electric slips to 5th spot in electric two wheeler race
Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola Electric Mobility, which once led India’s electric scooter race, slipped to the fifth spot in November as Hero MotoCorp, the country’s largest two-wheeler maker, overtook the SoftBank-backed company to emerge as the fourth biggest player.
TVS Motor Company continues to be the top-selling electric two-wheeler manufacturer, followed by another legacy player, Bajaj Auto. Recently listed Ather Energy stood third in the pecking order. TVS Motor sold 27,382 electric scooters as of November 28, according to registration data sourced from the government’s VAHAN portal.
Bajaj Auto was the runner-up, clocking 23,097 registrations during the same period. Tarun Mehta-led Ather Energy recorded 18,356 e-scooter registrations. Hero MotoCorp, which sells electric scooters, under the Hero Vida brand, recorded 10,579 registrations. But the biggest surprise was Ola Electric, which clocked 7,567 electric two-wheeler registrations as of November 28.
Ola’s fall to the fifth rank comes even as the company started shipping electric motorcycles, something that other players are currently lacking their respective portfolios.
Unlike its rapid e-scooter expansion, Ola is taking a gradual step-by-step approach when it comes to electric motorcycles, its chairman and managing director Aggarwal said in an earnings call after the company announced its second-quarter results.
After burning cash for many years, the electric two-wheeler maker is now prioritising profitability. “This is a four-year-old company, so when we grew like crazy, we did overbuild some organisations because that's the way how to manage crazy growth. You cannot have growth, profitability, and consolidation, cost consolidation all at the same time. But we have used the last six months to really consolidate our costs, including in people,” said Aggarwal.
Amid a challenging environment in the automotive business, the company is now pivoting to battery energy storage systems. Its locally-made 4680 cells will be used to produce ‘Shakti’, an energy storage product that is expected to be used as power backup for homes and businesses. The company has ambitious plans to disrupt the inverter market in the country.
“The current market that it addresses, it's a first of its kind product which is built in India, but the market it addresses is the current inverter market, which is largely lead acid or even the diesel generator used in homes, used in small SME or small commercial establishments. And it also complements the rooftop solar market growth because rooftop solar, as it's growing with the government push behind it, most of those installations will have some version of home battery storage installed with it,” said Aggarwal.
In terms of numbers, the average selling price for the product is expected to be at ₹2 lakh and at the lower end at ₹50,000. “So, an average selling price of about, you know, ₹1.25-₹1.50 lakh would be the average blended selling price,” he said.
