Ola Electric just invested in a company that can fully charge its electric scooters in five minutes

• Ola Electric has invested in an Israeli battery technology company StoreDot.
• The company has claimed that this is the first of several global strategic investments it plans to make.
• Ola Electric was set up in 2017 to run electric taxis on Ola, a cab hailing company that competes with Uber.

Ola Electric — the electric vehicle (EV) arm of ANI Technologies — on Monday announced that it has invested in an Israeli battery technology company StoreDot, a company that makes extreme fast charging (XFC) technology for emobility.

The company has claimed that this is the first of several global strategic investments it plans to make. This will be a part of Ola Electric’s plan to ramp up its core research and development (R&D) in advanced cell chemistry and manufacturing as well as other battery technologies and new energy systems.

As a part of the deal, Ola Electric will have access to StoreDot’s state of the art XFC battery technology that charges a battery from 0 to 100% in just 5 minutes. The Indian company — valued at $5 billion in January — will have the exclusive rights to manufacture batteries integrating StoreDot’s fast charge technology in India.

The company also plans to set up a gigafactory for manufacturing cells and meet the demand generated by Ola Future Factory. The company claims to have already submitted a bid under the Indian government’s production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for Advanced Chemistry Cell Battery Storage.

“The future of EVs lies in better, faster and high energy density batteries, capable of rapid charging and delivering higher range. We are increasing our investments in core cell and battery technologies and ramping up our in-house capabilities and global talent hiring, as well as partnering with global companies doing cutting edge work in this field,” Bhavish Aggarwal, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Ola, said.

Ola Electric was set up in 2017 to run electric taxis on Ola, a cab hailing company that competes with Uber. However, the company decided to pivot into electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing and set up the world’s largest electric two-wheeler factory in Tamil Nadu. The said factory is entirely run by women.

The company is currently developing its electric scooter, which competes with the likes of Ather 450X, TVS iQube and the new Bajaj Chetak. It has raised over $800 million to date, according to business intelligence platform Crunchbase. The company counts Tiger Global, SoftBank, Matrix and others.

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