India's Ola Electric hopes to increase sales with its inexpensive e-scooters

 India's Ola Electric hopes to increase sales with its inexpensive e-scooters

The cost of the new e-scooter models S1X and S1X+ will be 99,999 and 109,999 rupees, accordingly.

In an effort to attract more customers as the price of e-scooters approaches that of gasoline-powered vehicles, Ola Electric, India's leading manufacturer of electric scooters, unveiled its most cheap rides on Tuesday.

By the end of 2024, the SoftBank Group-backed business also intends to introduce four electric bikes.

The cost of the two e-scooter models, S1X and S1X+, is 99,999 rupees ($1,199.15) and 109,999 rupees, respectively. The S1X is Bangalore-based Ola's least costly e-scooter, costing roughly 36% less than the S1 Pro, which costs 140,000 rupees.

In India, the cheapest petrol scooter costs roughly 64,000 rupees.

According to industry figures, sales of two-wheeled petrol vehicles in India exceeded 5 million units in the most recent fiscal year, with electric vehicles making up around 15% of those sales.

By 2030, the government wants this to increase to 70%, and they are providing incentives to encourage more purchases.

According to founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola, the company has reduced production costs by 25% by introducing more affordable scooters using a new generation platform.

The business, which competes with start-ups like Ather Energy and started selling electric scooters in 2021, currently has a 32% market share. Data from the sector indicated that Ola sold about 95,000 e-scooters between April and August 2023, valued at $5 billion last year.

Aggarwal said his goal is on increasing EV adoption in India and wants electric models to make up the majority of scooter sales by next year, even though the new models would improve Ola's market share.

Without any government subsidies, our ultimate objective is to someday make the upfront cost of an EV comparable to internal combustion engine vehicles.The IPO-bound business also intends to treble the number of experience stores to 2,000 and increase the yearly manufacturing capacity of its facility from 500,000 to 2 million pieces.

According to Reuters, Ola had an operating loss of $136 million on turnover of $335 million during the fiscal year that ended in March 2023.

Aggarwal, though, asserted that the company has "scaled very well" thus far and anticipates stronger financial results. 

Ola also announced the addition of 100 new service locations, bringing the total to 500, across India.