Ola’s electric scooters will finally hit the road, as the company gears up to commence deliveries of the Ola S1 and S1 Pro from December 15. These deliveries were initially planned for the month of October, but are happening now, after almost a two-month delay.
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Ola attributed the delay to the global shortage of chipsets and electronic parts. The company initially had indicated plans to start deliveries in October after selling Rs 1,100 crore worth of electric scooters in a two-day sale in September.
This was further pushed to a window between October 25 and November 25. On November 21, customers were informed of another delay pushing the delivery date now to December 15- December 30.
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Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO – Ola Electric, posted a video on Twitter with the caption ‘Gaddi nikal chuki!’. The video reveals that the first batch of the electric scooters have rolled out of the production facility and they are en route for deliveries across the country. The company has also planned to organise a special delivery event for the first 50 customers in Bengaluru.
The electric scooters were launched in India on August 15. The Ola S1 and S1 Pro electric scooters are priced at Rs 99,999 and Rs 1,29,999, ex-showroom respectively.
During such a crucial period when the company was racing against time to deliver its scooters, it managed to raise about Rs 398.3 crore from investors such as Temasek, IIFL, Edelweiss, Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s VSS Investco, and DST Global’s Rahul Mehta. The firm allotted a total of 371 shares at Rs 1.07 crore each.
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Temasek invested Rs 185 crore, while Edelweiss put in Rs 111.6 crore and IIFL invested Rs 74 crore. Bollywood personalities such as Farhan Akhtar, Ritesh Sidhwani, Zoya Akhtar, Amrita Arora Ladak, and her husband Shakeel Ladak (Azara Advisors) have also been allotted shares in the company.
