Ola Electric raises $100 mln in long-term debt, largest ever in India's EV scene

Ola Electric on Monday announced it had signed a long-term debt financing agreement worth $100 million with Bank of Baroda, the largest-ever in the Indian EV industry. Looking at taking the electric scooter scene in India by storm in the coming times, Ola Electric is looking at using the amount towards funding and financial closure of phase 1 of the Ola Futurefactory.

Ola Futurefactory is touted to become the world's largest facility for manufacturing electric scooters and is coming up in the state of Tamil Nadu. The facility will be spread over 500 acres and Ola has invested ₹2,400 crore so far. Once operational, the factory will be able to manufacture 20 lakh units with the help of around 10,000 employees and another 3,000 to 5,000 robots.

As such, Monday's announcement becomes even more significant as Ola looks at speeding up the process. "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," said Bhavish Aggarwal, Chairman and Group CEO at Ola. "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 further informs that the first phase of its Futurefactory is near completion and that production trials of its first-ever electric scooter will begin thereafter. While Ola plans to manufacture units for domestic market, it is also targeting Latin America, Europe and even countries like the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Aggarwal himself recently shared a video of him testing the Ola e-scooter which is expected to have a per-charge range of around 150 kilometres and have a top speed of 90 kmph. Ola says it would also be working on massively improving support infrastructure that could help the e-scooter owners find charging points easily.