Okinawa electric is the most selling electric scooter brand in India which is playing the EV game in India since 2019 and has build its brand in India. However, everything isn’t as straight as it seems there are many rotten practices and illegal ways that Okinawa uses to expand and grow its business. It’s accused of simply importing the chinses electric scooters and re-branding them in India, this act is impacting the Indian EV space in a negative manner and government is also aware of this and taking action against such companies.
In this article let’s explore the company from the deep and understand why Okinawa is winning even after its transparent illegal business activities. Also let’s know who is strongest and the most legitimate EV brand in India.
Okinawa’s sales reports FY22:
The brand in itself has grown multifold within just a year and we can estimate it by observing its top position in each month’s sales report. Okinawa operates in the mass market of India and has the EV lineup of all the scooter that doesn’t require much upfront cost to buy and has the huge demand in market. Okinawa has cracked the code to somehow escape Indian government’s 100% tax on automobile imports. According to the regulations, if an EV maker imports more than 50% of its components from other countries it’ll have to pay 100% on the cost of the components, this rule has stopped many from supply Chinese products in Indian market. But seeing the market condition you may easily understand that this policy is failing on the ground. Okinawa electric is just the result of one of such policy failures and now its has become one of the biggest stakeholders of the Indian EV 2W market.
In FY22 the company reported selling 1 lakh electric scooter but of course it didn’t catch up much attention in the mainstream automobile media. Selling 1 lakh electric scooter is a huge deal in the recent time Ola also crossed the milestone of 1 lakh electric scooters in just 10 months. But it has done much more along with just making scooters and on the other hand Okinawa achieved this milestone but just selling Chinese built electric scooters in India. Mind you that other huge brands like Ather, Ola, etc. that you must have heard of aren’t profitable and hasn’t even reached its breakeven. But Okinawa is enjoying its profits by not even following the market trend.
Where other EV makers who’ve invested years in building just one scooter are justifying their losses and Okinawa is playing in profits. This year Okinawa’s profits has grown by not 2% or 3% but 16 freaky percentage, the last financial year Okinawa booked 118crores profits which is this year multiplied 16 time and grown to 822 crores.
The true revolutionaries in Indian EV space:
Not just Okinawa Electric there are many EV makers like Hero Electric, Ampere electric, Tunwal, Fidato, and many more, who aren’t even assembling scooters in India and sticking Chinese scooter to Indian customers by rebranding them as made-in-India. There are many instabilities in Indian EV space which is no-doubt improving but Indian government need to regulate this EV goldrush in many aspects.
But it isn’t just dark, we do have a ray of hope in EV market that’ll make India the global leader in EV manufacturing. But the most interesting part is, the true leaders of EV market are mostly startup and the big companies like Honda, Hero motocorp, etc. aren’t really interested in the EV market or don’t know how to win this market. But the EV startup in India are doing extraordinarily well not in just domestic market but also in B2B space also. We have starups like Ather, Ola, Pure EV, etc. who are making it big in domestic or B2C market and we also have startups like Zypp, ebikego, kinetic green, etc. who is doing equally well in path of growing the EV sector of India.
Future of Chinses EV Doppelgangers:
In my opinion companies like Okinawa are just like Micromax, they have no innovation, completely dependent upon others for sources and will definitely fall upon a small disturbance in the market. The Chinese product importing companies have no secure future just like the Chinese products.
Share this article:
