Ola Electric will eat into the share of existing two-wheeler manufacturers, said Helios Capital's Samir Arora on Monday. That's because the ace investor believes that the pie of overall scooter sales is unlikely to expand any bigger in the short term. If anything, Ola's growth has to come at the cost of some other player or players, he added.
“In auto, where would you have imagined two-three years ago that if there are x number of two-wheeler manufacturers and xy number of car manufacturers, and then you suddenly have new manufacturers. And now you see this Ola Electric come in, and therefore, an outsider comes in because he wants a part of this thing, but the overall scooter sales are unlikely to grow. So they are going to take share from the others,” Arora told CNBC-TV18.
Ola Electric launched its first line of electric scooters S1 and S1 Pro, priced around Rs 1 lakh on Sunday.
He added that the entry of Ola electric scooters will have a bigger impact. He added that most of the disruptions are taking place at the level of private companies as the trends suggest in fintech space and the investment firm will analyse it in the next few days.
"So, most of these disruptions are currently happening from private companies, whether it is fintech or not. And therefore, our first level of this thing, because we don't go into private markets, is to analyze it in terms of the negative impact it may have on our listed companies,” Arora added.
On market impact, he said, “because we don't go into private markets, is to analyze it in terms of the negative impact it may have on our listed companies. So for example, you could not have bought any OTT company, but its impact on the listed companies is usually negative, and therefore that is how you should be looking at it today.”
On the launch of its first electric scooter S1, Ola Chairman and Group Executive Officer Bhavish Aggarwal had said that electrification of vehicles is "an absolute urgency". "We have to build in India and make the country a global leader in electrification...and I believe the entire Indian industry should come together towards this ambition,” he said.
The Ola S1 electric scooter would come in two trims — S1 and S1 Pro — priced at Rs 99,999 and Rs 1,29,999, respectively. The company will officially open Ola S1 for purchase from September 8 and start deliveries across 1,000 cities and towns in October. Till September 8, the company will keep accepting the bookings at Rs 499.
The Ola S1 comes with a range of 181 km, a top speed of 115 km per hour and it can be fully charged in less than 40 minutes with a fast charger, and around six hours with the portable charger that will come with the scooter and can be installed at homes.
The scooter comes with various features like reverse mode, hill hold function, driving modes, and cruise control and takes less than 3 seconds to cross 0-40 km per hour. It comes with a keyless lock and unlock system and safety features like an anti-theft alert system and geo-fencing.
First Published: Aug 16, 2021 1:12 PM IST
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