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Ola Electric has sold more than ₹1,100 crore worth of electric scooters during a two-day sale, the electric vehicle company controlled by Ola Cabs’ co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal said.
The company offered its first electric scooter range comprising the S1 and S1 Pro models to customers. On Wednesday, the first day of the sale, Ola Electric clocked ₹600 crore in sales and claimed it sold four scooters every second in the first 24 hours.
“Over two days, we have done over ₹1,100 crore in sales! This is unprecedented not just in the automotive industry, but it is one of the highest sales in a day (by value) for a single product in Indian e-commerce history! We truly are living in a digital India," Ola Electric founder Aggarwal wrote in an internal blog.
He did not disclose the number of orders received by Ola.
Aggarwal said customers who could not purchase their scooters in the first sale could continue to reserve their Ola electric scooters, with the company planning a second purchase window starting 1 November, coinciding with the Diwali festival. Ola Electric will force traditional petrol scooter makers to redraw their strategies and accelerate their foray into the EV market, analysts said.
“The scooter market in India is around 5-6 million per annum, which is approximately 500,000 per month. In that, Ola has basically got orders for approximately 100,000 odd bikes, based on the ₹1,100 crore figure," said an equity analyst at a Mumbai-based brokerage on condition of anonymity.
Ola Electric was forced to defer purchases until 15 September as its website ran into technical difficulties on 9 September. On 15 August, Ola Electric ended weeks of speculation and unveiled its S1 and S1 Pro electric scooter models. The S1 was priced at ₹99,999, excluding subsidies by states and the Union government, while S1 Pro model was priced at ₹1.3 lakh.
Deliveries of the scooters are expected to begin in October in 1,000 cities and towns. Ola said in August it would sell its scooters through an omnichannel model, including both online and offline experience centres.
Ola will build the electric scooters at its so-called ‘Futurefactory’ in Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri district. The plant will have an initial capacity of 2 million electric vehicles a year which will be eventually expanded to 10 million units. The company announced last December a ₹2,400 crore investment in the first phase of the facility.
Ola is also expected to invest $2 billion over the next five years to build an electric two-wheeler charging network with its partners. “Ola Electric’s massive sales figure certainly augurs well for the growth of high-speed electric two-wheelers. It will go a long way in expanding the existing market for electric two-wheelers ," said Piyush Chowdhary, analyst, smart mobility at CyberMedia Research (CMR) a research firm. “The entry of Ola Electric in the electric two-wheeler space will push the market for EVs. That said, it will still take some time for EV two-wheelers to dominate."
CMR estimates that 15 million conventional two-wheelers are sold in India every year, accounting for nearly 99% of the two-wheeler market. “Significant barriers like higher initial purchasing prices, lack of charging infrastructure and limited sales and service network for electric two-wheelers continue to inhibit the widespread adoption of electric two-wheelers," it said.
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