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Ola Electric, the electric vehicle company founded by Bhavish Aggarwal, has received board approval to raise Rs 1,500 crore through the issue of securities. In a notice to the stock exchanges, Ola Electric said it would look at various options to raise capital, which could be in the form of equity shares, convertible debentures, warrants, ADRS, or GDRs. However, the company did not disclose what it intends to do with the fresh capital. Ola Electric recently launched a line of battery energy storage systems under the brand 'Ola Shakti' as the firm looked to maximise use cases for cells manufactured at its gigafactory. The new line of products is powered by Ola’s indigenous 4680 Bharat cell and requires “hardly any incremental investment”, according to Ola Electric’s Aggarwal. The company expects annual gigafactory consumption for the battery energy storage solutions to scale up to 5 gigawatt hours and exceed its automotive consumption in the next couple of years. The company said that the solutions will be positioned largely as business-to-consumer products. B2B products will be rolled out in the future. On the other hand, Ola Electric continued to struggle in maintaining its market lead in the electric two-wheeler segment, with peers Ather Energy, TVS, and Bajaj Auto reporting increased sales momentum. In September, the company managed to sell only 12,223 units compared with 24,752 units in the year-ago period. The decline in sales has also added pressure to the public firm that is yet to attain profitability. In Q1 FY25, Ola Electric reported a 50% slump in its quarterly revenue to Rs 828 crore. The slow sales have also weighed heavily on Ola Electric’s bottomline. Its consolidated Q1 net loss widened to Rs 428 crore compared with Rs 347 crore a year earlier. (Disclaimer: Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, is an independent director in Ola Electric) (Edited by Affirunisa Kankudti)
