Ola is a Bengaluru-based ride-sharing company that only a few people are ignorant of. Ever since Ola cabs became operational in all the major cities throughout India, it has become our go-to option. Along with the US-based Uber, Ola is one of the most dominating ride-sharing companies that offers the users a wide range of vehicles and renting options to choose from!
India’s leading mobility platform, Ola has been operating since 2010, when it was founded and has already streamlined its ride-booking and car renting service and its different modes throughout these years with a focus on its users to add to its growth.
Now, Ola has also chosen to empower sustainable development and therefore, came up with its unique concept of “e-scooters” or what we term as “electric scooters”. With Ankit Jain, Anand Shah, Bhavish Aggarwal, and Ankit Bhati as Co-founders, Ola Electric was founded in 2017 and is set to conquer the world with its unique electric vehicles. However, except for Bhavish Aggarwal, everyone else has stepped down from being Co-founders and has also exited the firm eventually. The Founder and CEO of Ola, is also the CEO of Ola Electric, along with being its Founder.
Ola Electric - Company Highlights
- Startup Name-Ola Electric
- Sector-EV, Manufacturing, Mobility
- Founders-Bhavish Aggarwal
- Founded-2017
- Valuation-$5 bn+ (2022)
- Total Funding-$861.9 mn (May 2022)
- Parent Organisation-Ola
- Website-olaelectric.com
Why Ola Electric Scooter is much like a “Revolution on two wheels”?
Yes, coming up with Ola electric scooters will certainly help people lose track of the rising costs of fossil fuels and all the morbid thoughts about the exhaustion of our fossil fuel reserves and their likes.
Ola electric is certainly a revolutionary idea and even its tagline says so. The tagline for Ola electric scooter says, “Ready or not, a revolution is coming” along with a motivating hashtag #JoinTheRevolution.
Here are the 3 key features that the Ola Electric scooter boasts of:
Big on Acceleration - The Ola electric scooters would be furnished with acceleration to envy and will allow the users to stay ahead on the road.
High on handling - Along with providing a remarkable acceleration, these bikes are also slick and promise exceptional handling on any surface.
Larger boot space - Ola Electric vehicles also come with a large boot space that is capable of storing two helmets and more important things you would need along the ride.
Ola Electric - Birth of the Entity
Ola has announced that its electricity-powered scooter manufacturing company would be different from its ride-sharing wing. They are two different lines of businesses under ANI Technologies where the former will continue to be a ride-hailing business whereas the latter would be associated with the manufacturing and selling of electric scooters.
Ola Electric Scooters - Built, Colour Variants, Specifications, and Charging
Ola has disclosed that their electric scooters will be made available in 2 versions – the Ola Series S - Ola S1, and the top-of-the-line Ola S1 Pro. The company has already launched S1 and S1 Pro scooters with prices starting from Rs 99,999 and Rs 1,29,999, respectively.
Ola electric acquired Etergo BV back in 2020 and announced that the Ola electric scooter is based on the Etergo Appscooter. The company has already adopted the platform of Etergo to be used in India in order to deliver better performance.
As per the batteries, Ola bikes' batteries are not swappable types. It will rather run on a standard charging system. The Ola S1 Pro charging time, when charged at home is 6 hours and 30 minutes, while the Ola S1 will be fully charged at home in about 4 hours and 48 minutes.
Ola electric scooter’s riding range for the S1 model is 121 km and for its S1 Pro model, it is around 181 km per charge. The latter also includes the Hyper Mode, which is not present in the former model. However, as per the reports in December 2021, the Ola S1 Pro will have a range of 135 km at full charge, which is the true range of these scooters. The earlier mentioned range by the mobility giant was clarified as the range of the E-scooters only on test conditions.
Ola's electric scooters are reportedly equipped with a 7.0-inch TFT colour display that will feature in-built navigation, onboard diagnostics, and other infotainment functions, and will be powered by an Android operating system.
Matte black, matte pink, and matte sky blue were some of the colour options that were disclosed by Ola initially. However, currently, the S1 Pro model comes in 10 different colours, which are:
- Midnight Blue
- Matt Black
- Millenial Pink
- Liquid Silver
- Anthracite Grey
- Porcelain White
- Neo Mint
- Marshmallow
- Jet Black
- Coral Glam,
On the other hand, the S1 model of Ola Electric scooters comes in 5 colours - Porcelain White, Midnight Blue, Coral Glam, Jet Black, and Marshmallow.
How can you charge Ola Electric Scooters?
The owners of Ola Electric vehicles will be able to charge their scooters using a standard 5A socket by using the portable 750 W charger that comes with the Ola Electric scooter. Furthermore, you can also charge it at one of its ‘Hypercharger’ charging stations. The company has already announced that it will make the stations live for charging scooters in over 100 cities initially, which will eventually cover over 400 cities.
The first Ola Electric Hypercharger was launched on October 25, 2021, ahead of the planned test drives of the Ola electric vehicles scheduled for November 10, 2021. The S1 test rides of the vehicles have already started, and have received an encouraging response from all across the country, as per the reports of November 20, 2021. Furthermore, after witnessing the overwhelming response that Ola S1 scooters have received, Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder and CEO of Ola, has decided to extend the test rides to over 1000 cities by December 15, 2021.
How to Book Ola Electric Scooter?
If you are eager to learn about OLA Electric bike booking and purchase one of such vehicles, then you don’t have to worry anymore because here are some easy steps that will help you with the Ola scooter booking without any hassles. Here's answering "how to book an OLA scooter online?" with some easy-to-follow steps:
First, you need to visit the official website of Ola electric: www.olaelectric.com and then click/tap on the ‘Reserve for Rs 499’ button, which appears at the top-right corner of your screen.
Now, you need to enter your mobile number, click on the captcha verification box to verify the same, and then click/tap on the Next option.
You will then receive an OTP on your mobile number, which you will need to type in and then click/tap on the Next option.
Then you will get a dialogue box that says ‘Total Payable – Rs 499’ and will offer 3 payment options – Debit/Credit card, UPI, and Netbanking.
After that, you need to choose your preferred payment option, after which you will be redirected to the payment gateway.
After making the payment you will see the final screen, which will confirm your Ola booking by saying “Congrats, you are now part of the revolution."
As soon as you have completed making the payment, you will receive the order ID and other details via SMS or email to the mobile number and the email address provided.
Ola Electric - Founders and Team
Ola Electric had earlier listed Ankit Jain, Anand Shah, Bhavish Aggarwal, and Ankit Bhati as Founders, but later on, everyone else left the company, making Bhavish Aggarwal, the sole Founder of the company, as of May 12, 2022. Anand Shah was the first founder to leave the company, Ola Electric in 2019. This resignation was followed by Ankit Jain, one of the closest confidantes of Bhavish. Jain left the company in August 2020. Ankit Bhati also left the company in 2020.
Funding received by Ola Electric Mobility
Ola Electric Mobility, the subsidiary of Ola responsible for manufacturing Ola Electric scooters has raised a total funding of $861.9 million to date over 9 funding rounds and is powered by 19 investors in total.
The lead investors of Ola Electric Mobility include big names like Softbank, Tata Sons Private Limited, Matrix Partners India, Tiger Global Management, Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Motors, and more.
The Ola electric scooter company is now looking to raise around $1 billion in the upcoming months. To funnel in the money from the equity firms and international investors, the company has already started its collaboration with JP Morgan, which has a network of equity firms, financial investors, strategic traders, and other large-scale investors. The company had already raised $100 million from the Bank of Baroda in July 2021 in order to kick start the first phase of the construction of the largest two-wheeler factory.
Ola Electric raises funds close to $200 million on October 1, 2021, from Falcon Edge, Softbank, and others to elevate its valuation to $3 billion. The recent funds would be used to boost the development of its other vehicle platforms, including electric motorbikes, mass-market scooters, and electric cars.
The company is further looking for its upcoming funding round worth $200 mn, which would be led by a couple of US-based bluechip tech funds along with its existing investors. This will reportedly boost the valuation of the four-year-old startup, Ola Electric, by over 60% to $5 bn. The company has finally succeeded in raising the fund it was looking for. Ola Electric raised over $200 million from a clutch of investors including Tekne Private Ventures, Alpine Opportunity Fund, Edelweiss, and others, to elevate its valuation to $5 bn, as per the reports dated January 24, 2022.
Ola Electric has raised funds equal to Rs 398 crore, as per the reports dated December 8, 2021, from a bunch of investors including Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who has poured in Rs 75 crore via VSS Investco; Farhan and Zoya Akhtar, who have invested around Rs 21 crore and Rs 10.7 crore, and from Ritesh Sidhwani, who has pumped in Rs 21.4 crore along with other investors Edelweiss, IIFL and others. This investment might also increase in the upcoming months. The EV manufacturing arm of OLA is also looking to raise around $53 Mn by allotting 371 Series C compulsory convertible preference shares (CCPS) to Temasek, angel investor Rahul Ravindra Raj Mehta, IIFL, Edelweiss, and a clutch of other investors. Ola Electric, after these recent rounds of funding, is valued at over $5 bn, as of December 7, 2021.
OLA Electric has raised $860.2+ mn via over 9 funding rounds that the company has seen. The last Ola Electric funding round was raised on January 24, 2021, where the company raised over $200 mn.
Ola ELectric - Growth
Ola Electric, which started taking bookings in July 2021, has already begun achieving some memorable milestones. Some of them can be summed up as:
- Ola Electric has clocked sales worth Rs 1100 crore in just 2 days
- It was hailed as the best-selling electric 2-wheeler after Hero Electric in March 2022, when it clocked the sale of 9000+ units.
- With over 12689 units of Ola Electric scooters sold in April 2022, Ola Electric was recognised as the highest-selling electric two-wheeler company in India.
- Ola has sold 41,024 units in 2022, as reported on June 25, 2022.
Ola Electric New Product
Ola Electric is up for a new product launch on the Independence Day of 2022. There are speculations that this new product is an Ola Electric car. It is on the 15th of August 2021 that the EV manufacturers launched the S1-series of electric scooters. So, we need to keep an eye on that for sure!
Ola Electric - Challenges
Aiming to transform the types of vehicles and the fuel that fuels them is itself a huge challenge that Ola has embraced with its e-scooters. Ola Electric has also faced many other challenges in its path of making EVs popular, and one of the major challenges is the fire incidents that the vehicle manufacturing company has seen in March 2022. Here are some of the prominent challenges faced by the EV giant so far:
Ola Electric Production Suspended in Tamil Nadu Futurefactory
Ola Electric has paused its production at Tamil Nadu's Krishnagiri plant, as of July 30, 2022, for nearly a week. It has piled up 4000+ units at the same factory. Though an ET news previously reported that the company has decided to shut down the factory, an OLA Electric spokesperson refuted the reports, and stated that like all factories need annual maintenance, the Ola Futurefactory did too!
Ola's Change of Payment Model Reduces Sales
Ola Electric initially used to set multiple payment windows for the customers, which opened on 4 specific dates and helped them pay in 4 instalments. However, on May 28, 2022, the Electric vehicle manufacturer changed that payment model to a one-time full payment model, where the customers will have to pay for their vehicles in full on a single occasion. This change has been impacting Ola Electric sales ever since. In the past 2 weeks, Ola has sold only 130-200 units, as per news dated June 25, 2022. Though this model is allowing the company to offer INR 10,000 discounts to its employees, the total vehicle sales were down by 27.3% MoM in May to 9230 units. The total vehicle sale of Ola stood at 41,024 units on June 25, 2022, so far in 2022.
Fire Incident in Pune
An Ola Electric vehicle set itself on fire in Pune in March 2022. This caused widespread fear and anxiety among all and has also led the company to recall 1441 bikes in order to diagnose them and check their overall health including their batteries, thermal, and safety systems.
Guwahati Accident
Amid the fire incident woes, Ola Electric has faced another criticism involving the son of Balwant Singh, a Twitter user, who alleged that he bought an Ola S1 Pro for his son, which met with an accident on March 26, 2022. This accident, he alleged, was due to a fault in the regenerative braking system. However, Ola Electric, in response to this, posted the telemetry data to prove that there were no issues with their scooter and that the accident was purely due to overspeeding and panic-braking. It also revealed the telemetry data in the form of an official statement on its Twitter handle.
Breaching of Customer Data and Privacy
As soon as Ola Electric posted the detailed telemetry report along with relevant graphs, proving that the son of Balwant Singh was overspeeding, and met with an accident, Ola Electric started facing huge backlashes for tracking customer data and publicising the same without the consent of the customers. This led Balwant Singh immediately mail Ola Electric and its authority to take down the personal telemetry data of Balwant's son that was shared. Any further action taken by Ola was not known, but the fact whether the telemetry data can be considered as a customer's own private data is debatable truly.
Balwant Singh's son's case was shot into the spotlight once again on May 12, 2022, when, as per the reports, Ola Electric responded to Singh, asking him to delete the negative reviews on social media within 24 hours or else, he would be facing legal action. The company's response was backed by its earlier claim that it hasn't breached data privacy.
Ola Electric Resignations
Ola witnessed another top-profile resignation on May 8, 2022. After Arun Sirdeshmukh, the CEO of Ola Cars, Dinesh Radhakrishnan is the next person to follow. Radhakrishnan was the CTO of Ola Electric who handled critical engineering functions of the company.
Ola Electric - Marketing, Brand Ambassadors and More
Ola Electric has already been a grand pre-booking success and is innovating its marketing strategies to attract the present generation of customers. The company is targeting all the available forms of media including traditional media, print media, and online media to empower the Ola scooter marketing strategy. The company has already roped in Bhuvan Bam, singer, songwriter, actor, and one of the most popular YouTubers of India, famous for his Youtube "BB ki Vines," as its brand ambassador to hook in the young generation of buyers.
Bhuvan Bam was hired on August 27, 2021, on a contractual basis, the agreement of which declares that the popular Youtube personality would collaborate with the electric scooter manufacturers to create entertaining and eccentric content revolving around the new-age Ola Electric scooters.
FAQs
How much does Ola electric scooter cost?
The Ola electric scooter has 2 models -
- Ola S1 is priced at Rs 99,999.
- Ola S1 Pro is priced at Rs 1,29,999.
The Ola e-vehicle prices, as mentioned above, are for all other states excluding Delhi, Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan, where people will find the Ola Electric bikes even cheaper.
What is the Ola S1 Pro boot space?
Talking about the Ola S1 Pro boot space, it is safe to conclude that Ola promises to bring you the largest boot space currently available in the market, which will have the capacity of accommodating two half-face helmets, with space for packing in more.
How is the Ola Electric bike booking process?
The Ola Electric scooter booking in India or the Ola Electric bike booking is an easy process where the users would just have to go to the Ola Electric official website and book them online.
What is the range of Ola electric scooter?
The ranges of Ola Electric scooters on a single charge are-
- Ola S1 - 121 km
- Ola S1 Pro - 181 km
Though Ola has advertised that the Ola Electric scooters would have a range of around 181 km, the true range of Ola bikes is 135 km, as disclosed later on.
What is the top speed of Ola Electric scooter?
The top speed of Ola Electric S1 is 90km/hr whereas for the S1 Pro model the top speed is 115 km/hr.
What are the Ola S1 Pro and S1 charging times?
The Ola s1 pro charging time is around 6 hours 30 minutes, while the S1 variant of the Ola e-scooter will be fully charged in around 4 hours and 48 minutes when charged at home.
How to charge OLA electric scooters?
The Ola Electric scooters can be charged using a 750 W charger that comes with the Ola Electric scooter that needs to be plugged into a standard 5A socket. Besides, the users can also charge their scooters at the nearest Hypercharging stations.
Who is the Ola brand ambassador?
The Ola brand ambassador is none other than the founder of "BB ki vines" Bhuvan Bam.