Ola Electric raises $1 million from Munjal family trust
The Pawan Munjal Family Trust has been allotted 18 preference shares of Ola Electric with a face value of ₹10 each at a premium of Rs 39,87,608 each.
Ola Electric has reportedly raised $1 million (around Rs 7.2 crore) from the family trust of Pawan Munjal, the Chariman and Managing Director of Hero MotoCorp as part of Ola Electric’s Series B funding. Ola Electric is the special purpose vehicle floated by ride share major Ola to promote electric mobility.
The Pawan Munjal Family Trust has been allotted 18 preference shares of Ola Electric with a face value of ₹10 each at a premium of Rs 39,87,608 each. The company has disclosed this in its filings with the authorities. In a separate development, the SoftBank Group has appointed Giles Whiting as a director on the board of Ola Electric.
In 2019, Pawan Munjal, through Hero MotoCorp, invested in Bengaluru-based electric two-wheeler startup Ather Energy.
SoftBank has made an investment of $150 million in Ola Electric at a valuation of $1 billion around seven months back. Ola Electric expects to be present in all segments of public mobility, two-wheelers, three-wheelers and four-wheelers. There are pilot scale operations going on in several allied activities like installing charging solutions and battery swapping solutions etc. The vehicles will also keep getting added to the fleet. The three cities taken up for the initial launch are Bangalore, Gurugram and Nagpur.
Indian cab operators and cab aggregators have been advised by the government of India to switch to electric vehicles completely by the year 2030 as far as their fleets are concerned. Ola being a major player had then floated Ola Electric as a separate entity to handle this. The biggest challenge for the company is going to be to create battery charging infrastucture in the cities it intends to operate in. Battery swapping is one solution it has come up with so that the drivers will not have to wait to charge their batteries before they can pick up their next fare.
Source: thenewsminute
