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, fell to fifth place in November, as Hero MotoCorp, the country’s largest two-wheeler maker, overtook the SoftBank-backed company to emerge as the fourth-largest player.

TVS Motor remains the best-selling electric two-wheeler manufacturer, followed by another legacy company, Bajaj Auto. Recently listed company Ather Energy ranked third in the hierarchy. TVS Motor sold 27,382 electric scooters as of November 28, according to registration data sourced from the government’s VAHAN portal.

Bajaj Auto came in second place, recording 23,097 registrations during the same period. Tarun Mehta-led Ather Energy has recorded 18,356 e-scooter registrations. Hero MotoCorp, which sells electric scooters, under the Hero Vida brand, registered 10,579 registrations. But the biggest surprise was Ola Electric, which recorded 7,567 electric two-wheeler registrations till November 28.

Ola’s decline to fifth place comes at a time when the company has started charging electric motorcycles, something other players currently lack in their own portfolios.

In contrast to its rapid expansion into e-scooters, Ola is taking a gradual, step-by-step approach when it comes to electric motorcycles, Chairman and Managing Director Aggarwal said in an earnings call after the company reported its second-quarter results.

After burning money for many years, the electric two-wheeler manufacturer is now prioritizing profitability. “This is a four-year-old company, so as we grew like crazy, we overbuilt some of the organizations because that’s how we manage crazy growth,” Agarwal said. “You can’t have growth, profitability, consolidation and cost consolidation at the same time. But we used the last six months to really consolidate our costs, including employees.”

Amid a challenging environment in the automotive industry, the company is now focusing on battery energy storage systems. The 4,680 locally made cells will be used to produce “Shakti”, an energy storage product that is expected to be used as backup power for homes and businesses. The company has ambitious plans to disrupt the inverter market in the country.

“The current market it is targeting is the first product of its kind to be manufactured in India, but the market it is targeting is the existing inverter market, which is largely lead acid or even diesel generator used in homes, used in SMEs or small commercial establishments. It also complements the growth of the rooftop solar market because rooftop solar, as it grows with government support for it, most of these facilities will have some version of home battery storage installed with it,” Aggarwal said.

In terms of numbers, the average selling price of the product is expected to be at INR 2 lakh and on the low end at INR 50,000. “So, the average selling price of around Rs 1.25 to 1.50 lakh will be the average mixed selling price,” he said.