Ola Electric, India’s first multimodal electric vehicle project that recently acquired its place among the unicorn list of the Indian startup ecosystem, is planning to enter into the Latin American market.
The development was announced after Marcelo Claure, chief operating officer of SoftBank, tweeted,”Can’t wait to take our RV to Latam with my friend and partner @bhash Bhavish.”
To which Ola Founder Bhavish Aggarwal replied “Looking forward to @OlaElectric in Latam very soon! Cheers!”
Also read: SoftBank pumps-in $250 million in Ola Electric
Ola, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati-led was founded in December 2010 as an online cab services in Mumbai. It is an online transportation network company developed by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The company has been expanding its horizons with focus on credit over the last few years.
On the other hand, Ola Electric mobility was set up as an independent entity in March 2019. It is currently running several pilots involving charging solutions, battery swapping stations, and deploying vehicles across two, three and four-wheeler segments.
Ola has been engaged with electric vehicles for the last several years and has been doing pilot programmes on two-wheelers and three-wheelers. This startup has a very ambitious target in mind to deploy a million vehicles by 2021 and around 10,000 of them by the end of this year.
Also, Ola Electric is building the charging infrastructure and swappable battery for these vehicles.
Apart from raising capital from SoftBank, which is its existing and most active investor, in March 2019, Hyundai Motor and Kia Motor announced an investment of $300 million into Ola where the focus would also be on electric vehicles.
As part of this partnership, Hyundai, Ola, and Kia will develop unique fleets and different mobility solutions.
The focus will be towards building India-specific electric vehicles and infrastructure, and also offer customised vehicles to different drive partners on Ola.
The domestic ride-hailing app company also recently announced that it will build a new and advanced technology centre in San Francisco which will employ more than 150 engineers there.
Besides, other electric-based ride-hailing and sharing startups includes Vogo, Yulu, Uber, among others.
Also read: Ratan Tata invests in Ola Electric Mobility