Ola Electric informed on Monday that it has raised $100 million long term debt from Bank of Baroda in order to finalize the first phase of development of electric two-wheeler manufacturing factory.
The company has claimed that Ola Electric is the largest two-wheeler factory in the world which aims at making 1 Cr vehicles a year at full capacity. The 500 acre factory is based in Tamil Nadu’s Krishnagiri.
The Company’s CEO and Chairman, Bhavesh Agarwal said, “Today’s agreement for long term debt financing between Ola and Bank of Baroda signals the confidence of the institutional lenders in our plans to build the world’s largest two-wheeler factory in record time. We are committed to accelerating the transition to sustainable mobility and manufacture made in India EVs for the world and we are happy that Bank of Baroda has joined us in our journey.”
Ola Electric is backed by investors such as Matrix Partners, Tiger Global Management and SoftBank, among others and is currently valued at over a billion dollars.
On the other hand, Sanjiv Chadha, Managing Director & CEO, Bank of Baroda commented on their association with Ola Electric, “The government has brought in several policies to incentivize make-in-India and to enable India to become a global EV leader. Ola is leading from the front and we are delighted to partner with them for their EV business. The Ola Future Factory will put India on the global EV map and we are proud to be associated with them”.
According to Moneycontrol, Ola Electric, along with its partners has plans to invest around $2 billion over the next five years to set up more than 1 lakh charging stations across 400 cities as lack of charging stations is the biggest hindrance to mainstream EV usage in India.
Ola had previously said, “The biggest barrier to consumer adoption and the biggest question that people have is: if we buy an EV, where will I charge it? Some call this range anxiety. We will be setting up a hyper charging network that will allow people to charge their Ola scooters across any location which is five-10 minutes away. These hyper charging towers in high streets, high-density areas, and stations in partnership with fuel companies. We will also put up destination chargers in places like office complexes, malls, and hospitals.”