Ola Electric, the electric vehicle arm of ride-sharing startup Ola Cabs, said on Thursday it has raised over $200 million in a round led by Falcon Edge, SoftBank and others, pushing its valuation to $3 billion.
Ola plans to use the funds to develop other vehicle platforms including electric motorbikes, mass market scooters and its electric car, it said in a statement.
Since the launch on August 15, the company has claimed to have sold over $150 million worth of electric scooters in its first purchase window, “outselling the entire two-wheeler industry on each of the two days”.
“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. Together we will bring mobility to a billion and sustainability to the future,” said Bhavish Aggarwal, chairman and group CEO of Ola.
Ola Electric has built its Futurefactory, the largest two-wheeler factory in the world that has completed Phase I construction and is currently undergoing production trials. Ola claims to have built the factory in a record time of six months.
Ola Futurefactory is also said to be the world’s largest factory that is entirely run by women. At full scale, it will have over 10,000 women employees.
Ola Electric said it had sold more than Rs 1,100 crore worth of electric scooters on September 17, the second day of a two-day sale in which the company offered its first electric scooter range comprising the S1 and S1 Prog models. On the first day of the sale, Ola Electric clocked Rs 600 crore in sales and claimed it sold four scooters every second in the first 24 hours.
The company is planning a second purchase window starting 1 November, coinciding with the Diwali festival.
Ola Electric was forced to defer purchases of the S1 scooter model until 15 September as its website ran into technical difficulties on 9 September. On 15 August, it ended weeks of speculation and unveiled its S1 and S1 Pro electric scooter models. The S1 was priced at Rs 99,999, excluding subsidies by states and the Union governments, while S1 Pro model was priced at Rs 1.3 lakh.
Being sold through both online and offline channels, deliveries of the scooters are expected to begin in October in 1,000 cities and towns.
Ola is also expected to invest $2 billion over the next five years to build an electric two-wheeler charging network with its partners.
The SoftBank and Tiger Global-backed ride hailing company, Ola Cabs, is also planning to go public through an initial public offering (IPO) worth as much as $1.5 billion. It has hired investment banks and lawyers to start work on its plans to list on the Indian stock exchanges.
Its rival Uber is also expected to file its draft IPO papers with the Securities and Exchange Board of India by October.
In July, Temasek Holdings and Warburg Pincus invested a combined $500 million in ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd which runs Ola. Aggarwal had also participated in the round. He currently holds a 7.9% stake in the 11-year-old company.
