Ola Electric raises $200m, valuation crosses $5 billion

Ola Electric has raised about $200 million (around Rs 1,500 crore) from a clutch of investors in a fresh funding round, valuing the electric vehicle maker at over $5 billion, according to sources. This valuation is jump of over 70% from the last round of funding.

Existing investors and some US-based bluechip tech funds participated in the funding round. When contacted, Ola declined to comment.

Last moth, Ola had announced raising over $200 million in funding from Falcon Edge, SoftBank and others, valuing it at $3 billion. While the round was closed around June, the official announcement was made recently.

Previously, the company had raised over $600 million from Tiger Global and Matrix India among others. This included a $100 million debt from Bank of Baroda that was announced in July.

The fresh funding will help Ola Electric to accelerate vehicle development across its range of scooters including mass-market scooters, motorbikes, 4Ws and other vehicle form factors.

S1, S2 bookings

In September, Ola had stated that the sales of its S1 electric scooters crossed Rs 1,100 crore in two days. The two e-scooters – Ola S1 and S1 Pro – were unveiled in August this year. The purchase window will re-open in November.
Ola has completed phase I construction of its manufacturing plant, spread across 500 acres, in Tamil Nadu. The company had announced an investment of Rs 2,400 crore towards the facility. The factory will be run entirely by women and employ over 10,000 women at full scale.

The company had previously stated that it would initially start with a 10 lakh annual production capacity and then scale it up to 20 lakh, in line with market demand, in the first phase.

Ola Electric had claimed that its plant – when fully completed – would have an annual capacity of one crore units, “that is 15 per cent of the world’s entire total two-wheeler production”.