Hyderabad start-up, Gayam Motor Works may power Ola’s electric vehicle fleet

Posted on April 8, 2017

Gayam Motor Works (GMW) in the outskirts of Hyderabad, Telangana, was founded in 2010. Raja and Rahul Gayam made this electric vehicle manufacturing Company. In 2008, Raja was studying Master’s degree at University College London. On returning home, the brothers made their first electric auto-rickshaw.

This was followed by electric assistive bicycle that had special mechanism instead of the costly imported Lithium-ion batteries. Gayam brothers cut costs to make it affordable for all. The price of the electric-assistive bicycle is Rs 45,000 and when fully charged, the speed of it is 60 km. The owner would pay only Rs 4 per 60 km. These bicycles were bought by UberEATS in Singapore, Hong Kong, and San Francisco. Last year, GMW was in the news for its partnership with UberEATS and Swiggy.

GMW supplied electric-assistive bicycle to Jayant Gowda, an employee of Swiggy, Bengaluru. Gowda test drove an electric-assistive bicycle to discover his deliverables doubled with minimum effort. Employees of Swiggy, BigBasket, and Ekart have bought the same bicycles and are paying in monthly installments to GMW. It is planning on making electric four-wheelers.

GMW spent Rs 18 crore on infrastructure for manufacturing electric vehicles. Gayam brothers are speaking with the investors for raising funds up to $10 million. They understand that charging or battery swapping stations have to be installed across the metros.

According to the Telangana information technology secretary, Jayesh Ranjan, Ola’s major project would start soon. Around 100 electric vehicles including cars, buses and autos would be allowed. These vehicles have to be found by Ola that has a partnership with automaker Mahindra and Mahindra. This Automaker manufactures electric cars as brands E2O and eVerito. Ola is contacting other Company for electric buses. Ola and GMW have discussed business for electric autos but the outcome no one knows as of now. After the electric vehicles are introduced, Indians would buy them and there would be less pollution. Ola hopes to trial run electric vehicles in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Masayoshi Son, Chief Executive of Softbank, is financing Ola to buy the electric vehicles. He had met Prime Minister Narender Modi in December when he informed the interests of Ola.