New Delhi: Electric scooter manufacturing start-up, Okinawa, on Monday announced that its decision to increase dealership network to 500 across the country from the present strength of the 350. The company also plans to focus on increasing its sub dealer network as well in order to improve sales in post-pandemic days.
While Covid-19 has forced a slowdown across the industries, Okinawa had shared the strategy to accelerate its marketing activities and strengthen its dealership network. Recently, the brand also announced a hike in dealership margins from 8% – 11%, to support the partners amid the unprecedented Covid-19 spread, the company said in a statement.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, the Gurugram-based start-up would focus on states like Maharashtra, Bihar, Assam and other eastern states to increase sales of its electric two-wheelers. According to Jeetender Sharma, managing director and founder, Okinawa, as the Covid-19 curve gets flat, there will be a demand for private vehicles and given the fact that electric vehicles are economically more viable in the longer run, people would be want to opt for it.
“There is no doubt that it will take a little time for the market to pick up. While the things gradually return to normalcy, we plan to grow ourselves across the country to serve the customers better. We are spreading our wings to provide our customers across to the cities with easy availability of the products and services,” added Sharma.
The Narendra Modi government has been pushing for electric mobility as it looks to transform India’s energy landscape to keep with its climate change commitments. In 2019, Indian government earmarked ₹10,000 crore to encourage development, manufacturing and usage of electric vehicles and components in the domestic market though the second phase of the Faster Adoptions and Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles (FAME) scheme.
As the part of the scheme, Centre decided to incentivize the purchase of 7,090 electric buses with an outlay of ₹3,545 crore, 20,000 hybrids with ₹26 crore, 35,000 four-wheelers with ₹525 crore and 500,000 three-wheelers with ₹2,500 crore.
