New Delhi:- Ola Electric Mobility is set to go public sooner than its founders had previously envisioned, reflecting the rapid growth of Indian startups since launching electric scooters in late 2021.

“I think it will take four to six years to make a profit and go public,” said founder and CEO Babish Agarwal over a Vietnamese iced coffee in New Delhi's bustling Connaught Place,” he said in an interview. “I feel it will be sooner now. The market response has been so strong that Ola Electric has grown and matured faster than originally planned.”

Backed by SoftBank Group and Tiger Global Management, the company has become the market leader in electric scooters in India with a 38% share. More than 239,000 electric scooters have been sold since December 2021, according to the Electric Vehicle Manufacturers Association. 

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While demand initially came from first-time scooter buyers, most of Ola Electric's customers now are already fully-fledged converts, said 37-year-old Aggarwal, dressed in a black Nehru jacket, popularized by India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and later, The Beatles.

Aggarwal has ambitions to expand, with plans to unveil a motorbike by the end of this year and a battery-powered car in 2024, though the timelines may change. He also continues to consider exporting scooters to Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Europe, a proposition that got waylaid because demand at home was so strong, according to Aggarwal, whose first startup, ANI Technologies, runs Ola ride-hailing operations.

Ola Cabs got as far as selecting banks for a $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,217 crore) IPO in Mumbai, Bloomberg News reported in August 2021, but that never materialized. The company, which competes against Uber Technologies Inc., is a “profitable business for us now,” Aggarwal said in last week's interview in Delhi. He declined to comment on the new listing attempt and did not give a date for a possible Ola Electric IPO.  

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Agarwal is building a 115-hectare battery factory in southern India to compete with billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries. Its aim is to manufacture lithium-ion batteries, primarily for Ola electric vehicles, and in some cases also to provide energy storage and energy solutions for private households.

Agarwal, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, said in-house manufacturing of EV components will enable Ola Electric to sell cars at scale and boost profit margins. He said developing vehicles from the ground up would give the company more control over quality and costs in a market where most electric vehicles have converted from petrol models. 

Succeeding with electric vehicles is not easy. Internal combustion engines are still India's mode of transport of choice, dominating the country's roads. The country's lack of charging facilities and high prices have hampered the spread of EVs. Last year, it sold 49,800 vehicles nationwide, just 1.3% of its 3.8 million passenger car sales, according to Bloomberg NEF.

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Bangalore-based Ola Electric will take on experienced manufacturers such as market leaders Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, and even Elon Musk's Tesla, which is looking to invest in India.

Ola Electric's scooter business was also affected by delivery delays due to chip shortages, quality, and fire issues. Sales in June fell 39% to 17,590 units, but the government cut subsidies provided under the program to promote the introduction and production of (hybrid and) electric vehicles. Other automakers were also affected.

Still, according to Aggarwal, improvements in technology have reduced the time it takes to bring products to market. Ola Electric saves time using digital simulation and artificial intelligence in manufacturing. "I'm building a tech-oriented group of companies," he said. "Another big technology problem of our generation is computers and AI. So we do something."

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Agarwal, who is involved in day-to-day decision-making at his company, which employs about 7,000 people, said the so-called flat organization also speeds up the production process.

“We do in a day what it takes a company a month,” he says. “Our philosophy in construction is to make things as good as possible without sacrificing quality or safety, at the lowest possible cost, and at the fastest possible speed. Agarwal believes strategies to control different stages of the electric vehicle supply chain will reduce costs and improve product performance and design.

“Tesla is for the West, Ola is for the rest of the world,” he said. 

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The Electric Scooter Manufacturer Ola will soon release its Initial Public Offer for the public to subscribe by this year's end as it will be raising an amount of $1 Billion as it is looking forward to manufacturing electric cars in the World.