Ola Electric has announced new plans for its retail outlets. The Bengaluru-based EV start-up aims to open 500 showrooms by March 2023. At present, the company has 200 outlets open.
Customers prefer physical stores to digital purchase
Back in August 2022, when the company launched the first electric scooter, Ola had a philosophy of digital sales channels. However, in the month of August 2022, they sold only 5,000 units of scooters. Hence CEO Bhavish Aggarwal decided to open new physical stores where customers can check out the scooter. This proved to be successful. Fast forward to January 2023 and Ola is now a market leader in the electric scooter segment. The company sold over 18,000 copied of the S1 scooter. This means customers definitely want to check out the product before purchase.
Ola Electric’s target of 500 stores
Ola has an ambitious plan to open 300+ stores in less than two months. Ola says this expansion is targeting at not just metro cities but also Tier III and Tier IV locations. Ola wants to expand to rural areas and smaller towns too. This means, Ola will have to open 6-7 stores everyday to meet the deadline.
These store do allow customer test rides and showcase a variety of colour options of the scooter, but ultimately, the customer has to purchase the scooter online via the Ola app.
Ola’s Motorcycle plans
Ola has released a teaser video of its upcoming products. The electric two-wheeler maker is currently offering only scooter, but the teaser video revealed five motorbikes. All of these were of different categories like cafe racer, cruiser, scrambler, naked and an adventure bike. It seems that Ola will target the mass market segment for the electric motorcycles as well. This could mean that prices could range from INR 85,000 to INR 1,25,000. The first of these motorbikes will be coming up later this year. Ola could also position one of the bikes for the premium segment.
Also Read – Ola teases 5 electric motorcycles for India.
