It’s a company that’s less than four years old. It has a huge factory that was set up in about eight months. It has an all-woman workforce and boasts in-house design and innovation, automation being the icing on the cake. The company’s top boss calls it the Ground Zero of India’s EV revolution. Welcome to Ola Electric.
Scale Is Important
The two wheeler factory of Ola Electric can make up to 10 million two wheelers a year. As we in India look at the future, we have to think scale; we cannot be incremental, says Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder of Ola Electric. He draws motivation from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to make India a developed nation by 2047. “That goal inspires our generation, my generation to think big, dream big and execute big.” India is the largest country by population, and the world also will benefit from India executing the future at scale, he says.
New Energy Paradigm
Innovating and developing new technologies are key aspects in the functioning of Ola Electric. One example is the 4680 cell (46 mm in diameter and 80 mm in height) made by the company.
The heart of the EV is the cell, and the EV revolution actually represents a new energy paradigm, says Aggarwal. The 4680 cell is bigger than the usual cell, has higher energy density and has higher efficiency. We are one of the two, three companies in the world that have built this technology, he adds.
The energy paradigm of the past, and the present, are gasoline based. Certain countries in the world got geopolitical strength because of that. India ended up becoming a net importer of oil. And that’s why macro economically, that’s been a risk for India if a war breaks out in West Asia. But the future of energy won’t be only gasoline but will be materials-based, so based on technology, says Aggarwal.
How Ola Electric Came About
After graduating from IIT Bombay, Aggarwal worked at Microsoft for two years before setting up Ola, the ride hailing company. He calls himself as someone with the heart of a technologist, stuck in an entrepreneurial profession.
While building the ride hailing company, he got exposed to the world of mobility. Ten years into his entrepreneurship journey, he understood the broader strategic themes of the world better.
“Energy has been a weakness for India. But if we are able to accelerate the journey towards renewable generation and storage, India will be able to become a stronger economy as well as a cleaner, future oriented economy. So that’s when we said, let’s take the lead here because when we looked around, nobody was doing this.”
What Next For Ola Electric
Our vision is to build one of the world’s largest EV hubs in the next 10 years, says Aggarwal.
It will have three pillars—a two-wheeler factory, a gigafactory and one a four-wheeler factory (which is a future project). The first is in place. The gigafactory that will manufacture lithium ion cells will have an initial capacity of 5 gigawatt hours. It will be scaled up in phases to achieve a full capacity of 100 gigawatt hours.
The world today has a production capacity of about 2000 gigawatt hours, and China has the lion’s share, says Aggarwal.
