Ola-founder plans on opening world’s largest e-scooter plant in India
Last updated on March 9th, 2021 at 05:26 am
The Ola-founder and CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal disclosed his plans of setting a massive e-scooter plant on the outskirts of Bengaluru on whooping 500-acres of land. The mega electric vehicle project would be one of its kind in India and given its scale would become the world’s largest two-wheeler manufacturing unit. Aggarwal said that he hopes to open Ola Electric Mobility Pvt by the summer of 2022, with the target of manufacturing 10 million vehicles annually or 15% of the world’s electric two-wheelers. He added that he would start international sales by around 2023.
The 35-year-old entrepreneur is known starting two of India’s most successful ventures – Ola, the ride hailing service and Ola Electric. Ola Electric Mobility is believed to be his net his $330 million mega-project roll out one e-scooter in every two seconds, setting a record in itself.
With the ongoing surge in petrol and diesel prices and increasing pollution in India, Ola’s head believed that his product would be able to cater to the demand of the Indian middle-class population. He added that his future goal would be to set up a production unit of electric cars, in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ flagship program, which promotes self-reliance and sustainable mobility.
“It’s a vehicle we’ve engineered ground-up so India can get a seat at the world EV table,” the 35-year-old said in an interview last week. Indian companies “have the smarts and energy to leapfrog into the future of EV.”
In the pursuit to tap the EV market analysts believed that Aggarwal would have to beat both his competitors at home (including Hero MotoCorp and Bajaj Auto) and abroad (including global manufacturers like Ather Energy and China’s Niu Technologies). He clarified that his focus was to bring in affordable electric vehicles in the Indian and international markets. For the immediate launch, he has planned on creating five two-wheeler models, including mass-market, premium, and self-balancing versions. “Our ambition is to build the world’s leading urban mobility EV company,” he said. He added, “We’re very well-capitalized and investor interest is unprecedented.”
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As per the reports, Ola’s upcoming EV factory would employ about 10,000 workers, who would be assisted by over 3,000 robots and a 1000- member team of software engineers. Given the sustainable aspect of the entire project, the company emphasized that it would deploy solar panels on its roof and cut carbon footprint, the unit would get its components made in an adjacent complex.
“We are building our own battery packs. We are building our own design, we’re designing engineering and manufacturing our own battery packs for designing, engineering, and manufacturing our own motors. And we’ll also make all software. So it’s a much more vertically integrated technology,” Aggarwal told MoneyControl.
