Ola’s Investors Back Its Electric Vehicles Business With Rs 400 Crore Funding

Ola’s electric vehicles (EV) subsidiary, Ola Electric Mobility, has raised Rs 400 crore from Ola’s early backers Tiger Global and Matrix India, among others, the company said on Friday (1 March), reports Mint.

This is reportedly the first external investment into Ola’s fledgling EV business, which has been struggling to take off in India.

Ola Electric Mobility will be headed by Anand Shah, who has experience working for Audi and BMW, and Ankit Jain, who has been leading Ola’s connected vehicle platform.

The new infusion is predicted to aid Ola in its objective of bringing one million electric vehicles on Indian roads by 2022.

Ola Electric is reportedly running several pilots to deploy EVs and charging solutions. The company had in April, claimed that it would launch a fleet of 10,000 electric vehicles (EVs) over a year.

However, experts point out that the infusion comes at a time when Mahindra & Mahindra announced its foray into the shared mobility space.

Ola had also recently launched an app called Glyd in a bid to cater to personalised transportation needs through electric vehicles.

According to the report, Ola had earlier tied up with Mahindra to launch a pilot for electric vehicles in Nagpur in 2018. The project, however, failed to take off as the drivers were dissatisfied with the EVs and some of them even returned the cars.