Tesla’s entry in the Indian electric vehicles market is a lottery for emerging players like Ola Electric.
Tesla’s entry has taken the Indian automobile industry by storm. After exciting millions of Indian fans through a tweet about Tesla’s India foray, founder and CEO Elon Musk finally registered the company in Bengaluru on 8th January under the name ‘Tesla Motors India and Energy Private Limited’. According to the filing, the three directors of the Indian unit are David Feinstein, Vaibhav Taneja and Venkatrangam Sreeram. The authorized share capital amounts to ₹15 lakh with paid-up capital amounting to ₹1 lakh.
The emotions and expectations with the automobile behemoth’s entry into the Indian scene are undoubtedly mixed. Few see the venture with an optimistic vision, trusting that company will disrupt the country’s market. However, there are plenty who are cynical about the feasibility of Tesla in a developing country like India. Tesla’s entry might just stir an electric vehicle revolution. Not just its cutting-edge products; the American automaker has a lot to offer to the ecosystem indirectly.

Who’s going to benefit with Tesla and how?
To begin with, Tesla’s introduction to India is exactly the advertisement that Indian automobile industry needed to affirm its ambitions of becoming a global EV manufacturing hub. From here, one can expect the investment graph to go up, painting a bright future of the industry. This further leads to better infrastructure for emerging players like Ola Electric. In 2018, Indian entrepreneur & founder of Ola Cabs Bhavish Aggarwal’s passion project Ola Electric announced its vision to bring at least one million EVs on Indian roads by 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic placed an unprecedented boulder in the path of the company’s ambitious vision. Nevertheless, Aggarwal announced Ola Electric’s plan to build the world’s largest scooter factory in Tamil Nadu with an investment of ₹2,400 crore.
However, even without the pandemic, a lot of crucial elements essential to realize the vision were lacking for Ola Electric. This includes special emphasis on the EV charging infrastructure. Charging is the second largest reason why people hesitate from buying EVs. 24 percent of buyers, according to a KPMG survey, back off while buying EV due to the problem of charging. With the entry of world leader Tesla, the development of EV infrastructure is already catching pace which will surely benefit Ola Electric. Tesla’s entry into Indian market also strengthens the prospect of the EV industry as a whole in India, leading to better policies by the government and impetus in the sales and rentals of electric vehicles, again beneficial for emerging players like Ola Electric.
Towards a technically advanced future
Centi-billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk is not just famous for his accumulated fortune out of tech ventures but for his vision, engineering and innovation. SpaceX and Tesla, both are renowned for their innovative technology, dominating not just Earth, but even Mars. India being part of the plans of pioneering technology makers will be nothing less than groundbreaking for emerging tech entrepreneurs like Bhavish Aggarwal among others.

Elon Musk has made sure that he will tap the potential of the Indian market to the best of its potential. One can’t deny that the entire excitement and noise surrounding Tesla coming to India has less to do with Tesla and more with Elon Musk’s fame, there is still no doubt about the world’s richest man’s Midas touch. Everything he touches, he turns it into gold and Tesla is just one example among plenty others. Tesla’s technology shattered the glass ceiling of the global automobile industry, putting the conventional notion of cars to test. The company is futuristic in every sense, whether it is their auto-pilot mode or exceptionally creative marketing tactics.
If this all sounds convincing enough, let’s just give you a reason to place unshakable faith in Musk’s innovation. Remember the time when Musk sent the Tesla Roadster to Mars, fitting it into the Falcon Heavy Rocket’s nose cone? SpaceX is a testimony of how far Tesla CEO’s innovation can go. To Mars and beyond. While the price of the cars, current charging infrastructure, sales network and service network of Tesla might make selling the cars a dicey business for the company in India, there is more to the holistic revolution of the Indian EV industry.
