Electric two-wheeler manufacturers Okinawa and Hero MotoCorp-backed Ather are ramping up their production to capture the highly competitive market where EV player like Ola Electric has incresed its share.
Okinawa, once a market leader that had captured 25% of the EV two-wheeler space till December 2021, has seen its share coming down to around 11.5% in just one year.
The company is now preparing for new launches.
Jeetender Sharma, founder and managing director of Okinawa Autotech, said the last few months have been slow in terms of sales as they wanted to sell older model scooters and clear their inventory before launching new products this year and regain their leadership.
“We’ll be launching an electric bike around mid-FY24 and a scooter soon after, which will definitely help us go past the current new-age players,” the Okinawa managing director said.
He said the company will also inaugurate its third facility around August, which will increase its production capacity to a million units per year, from the current 0.39 million.
Sharma said the company will also be doubling its experience centres—Galaxy stores—to about 30 to tap the younger user base, which is yet to know more about Okinawa’s products.
Another EV two-wheeler manufacturer, Hero MotoCorp-backed Ather, recently added a second manufacturing plant, after which its total annual production capacity has gone up to 0.42 million from 0.12 million.
It has already expressed the need for a third plant and had begun work to put that in place.
Okinawa and Ather’s product pipeline looks largely similar to that of Ola Electric, which is the current market leader with about 30% market share.
Ather’s CEO and co-founder Tarun Mehta Ather said the current market share that EV players have is insignificant because EV adoption is still in its early days in the country.
While existing players in the electric scooter space are continuing to expand their reach, most of them have simultaneously been working on electric motorcycles to offer a complete product range.
