Bonjour, new guests from small-town India
Puneet Dhawan of Accor is brimming with ideas on ways to revive the hospitality sector
Expecting rapid adoption of four-wheeler electric vehicles on a mass scale to take time, ride-hailing firm Ola is betting big on two- and three-wheelers for its electric mobility drive, according to a senior company official.
With lessons learnt from its experiment in Nagpur, where the company had partnered with Mahindra & Mahindra in 2017 for a multi-modal electric mass mobility project, Ola believes that “four-wheelers are not yet ready” for such usage in India on a large scale.
Therefore, the company is now focussing on deploying 10,000 electric two- and three-wheelers by the end of March 2020. “The biggest lesson (from Nagpur) was that (electric) four-wheelers are not yet ready. It is going to take a couple of years for the math on four-wheelers to work,” Ola Electric Mobility (OEM) Co-founder Anand Shah said. He, however, said the company hasn’t given up as it is confident that electrification is viable in the long run. Sharing the company’s road map for electric mobility, Shah said, “In our view, we are putting our bets on three-wheelers and two-wheelers in the coming year.”
Right now in the EV market in India, he said, it is mostly three-wheelers, with E-rickshaws being “the largest population of EVs by natural adoption”. Further, he said, “We think two-wheelers are also emerging very quickly, partially because of policy and also because of the rising interest in commercial use of two-wheelers, whether that is in deliveries for our own food business or any of our competitors, e-commerce companies or scooter sharing.”
Delhi, Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka, Telangana, AP and Gujarat could be some of the places of early adoption, he said. Reiterating that Ola is still “actively working on electric four-wheelers”, he said, “We are testing electric cars. We have tried every electric car that exists in India today, but we think it’s going to take some time for rapid four-wheeler EV adoption at scale.”
On investments for electric mobility, Shah said, “We have raised ₹400 crore from some of our early investors — Tiger Global Management, Matrix India. That money will be spent on meeting these milestones, on getting the technology right, getting the business model right and we will keep growing from there.”
Puneet Dhawan of Accor is brimming with ideas on ways to revive the hospitality sector
Citroen’s first vehicle sports a novel design and European interiors. It is also meant to be as comfortable as ...
The pandemic is only the tip of the iceberg that the country’s cash-poor airlines — both regional and national ...
The government is yet to specify the framework of its recently announced old vehicle scrappage policy
With initial public offerings galore, we give you a cheat sheet to score some good grades
Biggest risk in selling funds in a rising scenario is exiting early and missing out on further gains
Go for a standard vector-borne diseases policy if you don’t have a regular health plan
No credit risk is an attraction, but note the nuances
With the public looking beyond mainstream media for reports from the ground, independent digital platforms are ...
Salty, buttery, cheese coated or with maple syrup and bacon — popcorn is lending its adaptable self to gourmet ...
A toast to a traditional drip irrigation system still going strong in the Northeast
Raza Mir’s ‘Murder at the Mushaira’ works well as a historical novel that captures the sunset years of the ...
Its name is the starting point of a brand’s journey and can make a big difference in the success sweepstakes
Sober spirits are the in thing
A peek into where ad spends went last year and where they are headed tomorrow
Can Swiggy Instamart disrupt the ecommerce groceries space, currently ruled by the Amazons and Big Baskets? ...
Three years after its inception, compliance with GST procedures remains a headache for exporters, job workers ...
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives of companies are altering the prospects for wooden toys of ...
Aequs Aerospace to create space for large-scale manufacture of toys at Koppal
And it has every reason to smile. Covid-19 has triggered a consumer shift towards branded products as ...
Please Email the Editor