Ola Electric, the electric unit of ride-hailing company ola, announced on Monday that it has raised $200 in a new funding round. Tekne Private Ventures, Alpine Opportunity Fund, Edelweiss and others participated in the round. Ola’s sister company raised the new funding round at a valuation of $5 Bn. The company had raised a similar amount of funding at a valuation of $3 Bn.
The company is expected to use the funds to increase the production of its recently launched two-wheeler bikes. After much delay, the company had finally launched its bikes Ola S1 and Ola S1 Pro last year in August.
Since last few weeks Ola’s newly launched electric bikes have been getting lot of media attention, albeit for all wrong reasons. Several customers took to social media platform to complain that their Ola bikes were shipped in damaged conditions while other customers companied about the faulty spare parts.
Unperturbed by these criticisms, Bhavesh Agrawal’s company is confident that it will be able to make a dent in India’s highly nascent electric vehicle market. Ola’s Electric’s primary competitor is Ather Energy, which recently announced that it will be soon raising around $57 Mn from Hero Motor Corp.
Both companies are heavily funded but Ola Electric is certainly way ahead in the fundraise. It counts Tiger Global, SoftBank and Matrix among other high-profile investors.
After clocking $5 Bn valuation, Ola Electric will joins the likes of PharmEasy, Postman, Dream 11, Razorpay and Swiggy.
Although electric vehicles have created lot of buzz in the Indian market but it continues to face lot of infrastructure problem. The main challenge being the sheer dearth of charging stations across the country.
Keeping aside these challenges, Ola and Ather Energy are aggressively pursuing their goals. Besides, over the years Indian government has announced slew of measures to encourage electric vehicle industry in the country.