India’s Largest E-Scooter Maker Ola Electric Reports Operating Loss of $136 Million, Missing Revenue Target

India’s largest e-scooter maker, Ola Electric, posted an operating loss of $136 million on revenue of $335 million in the last financial year that ended in March , three sources told Reuters, missing the revenue target it had set.

The 2022/23 loss figure for SoftBank-backed Ola Electric, which is gearing up for an IPO of up to $700 million, has not yet been released or filed with Indian authorities, who are granting a deadline. going until September to submit the results of the previous year.

Ola declined to comment.

Last year, in June, the e-scooter maker released a statement saying it was “on track to surpass $1 billion in revenue by the end of the year” and that “the forecasts for the future seem even stronger”.

The execution rate is a financial indicator calculated by taking one month of Ola’s income and multiplying it by 12.

But that revenue projection for 2022/23 has not been met. Two sources with direct knowledge of its finances said Ola’s first full year of operation recorded revenue of $335 million with more than 150,000 units sold, and an operating loss of $136 million. millions of dollars.

Ola sold around 21,400 electric scooters in March – the last month of the 2022/23 fiscal year.

Since beginning sales in late 2021, Ola has become India’s market leader for electric scooters with a 32% share, competing with Ather Energy as well as companies such as TVS Motor and Hero Electric. It was valued at $5 billion last year and has raised nearly $800 million from investors since 2019.

Earlier this year, Ola Electric presented aggressive projections internally, estimating that its revenue would quadruple to $1.5 billion in 2023-24, the year in which it also expects to post its first profit, Reuters reported last week.

But that was before India cut government incentives in May for electric scooters, which analysts say will force Ola and others to redesign their growth plans.

Despite the reduction in incentives, the company remains confident that it can become operationally profitable this year – a key indicator watched by potential IPO investors, according to one of the sources.

“Ola is a market leader in a short period of time […]. That’s why current investors are bullish,” the person added.

Ola claims to build its electric scooters in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in “the world’s largest two-wheeler factory”, which has the capacity to produce 10 million units a year. The company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars expanding its factory and service centers. (Reporting by M. Sriram and Aditi Shah; Writing by Aditya Kalra and Simon Cameron-Moore)