Exclusive: Olectra Targets 1,200 Electric Bus Deliveries a Quarter in FY28

Olectra Greentech is targeting electric bus deliveries of around 1,200 vehicles per quarter in FY28, as the company looks to substantially scale volumes from where it stands today. To put that ambition in perspective, the electric bus manufacturer delivered just 358 vehicles in the latest quarter — so this is roughly a 3.5x jump the company is aiming for, not a small incremental step.

The Ramp-Up Plan, Quarter by Quarter

"We can reach up to 600 vehicles per month in the next one to one-and-a-half years — that's our target," Mahesh Babu, Managing Director, Olectra Greentech, told Autocar Professional. He laid out the plan in stages rather than a single jump: "In the next two-quarter period, we want to deliver about 600-plus vehicles. Then in the following two quarters, we want to go to about 700-800 vehicles and the ultimate aim is to reach about 1,200 vehicles per quarter in the next financial year."

Behind this ramp-up sits an order book of more than 8,000 electric buses — a genuinely large backlog by any measure. Olectra expects to deliver around 2,000-2,500 vehicles during FY27, though the actual pace will depend partly on how quickly customers and the supporting infrastructure around them are ready to absorb the vehicles.

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Why Production Isn't the Real Bottleneck

Here's the part that might surprise people outside the industry — Olectra doesn't see manufacturing capacity as its main obstacle to delivering more Olectra buses. "The challenge is not production — it's supply chain and also absorption in the market," Babu said. Unlike a regular vehicle sale, a large electric bus deployment needs several pieces of infrastructure ready at the same time. Depot preparation, power availability and the actual timing of deployment can all delay when a bus that's already built actually starts running. "If you look at e-bus adoption, depot readiness and flag-off happen suddenly and then there is a gap, so that is a challenge," Babu said. "Production capacity is only one piece of the puzzle. In EV, you have to look at the whole ecosystem. When the ecosystem is ready to absorb, we are ready to deliver from production."

Government tendering processes add another layer of unpredictability on top of that. "The government tendering process, depot readiness, power availability and infrastructure preparation all take time," Babu said, adding that faster market absorption could push delivery numbers higher than the current FY27 estimate.

E-Bus Adoption Is Climbing, Slowly But Steadily

Zooming out to the broader market, Olectra expects overall electric bus adoption to keep expanding too. Babu said EV penetration in the bus segment reached close to 7% during the quarter, up from around 4.7-5% a year earlier. "What I am seeing is that it is improving quarter on quarter, year on year," he said. "The adoption is clearly going up point by point, which is the good part of it." Olectra has also crossed 4,000 cumulative electric vehicle deliveries, according to Babu, as its installed fleet continues to grow across the country.

Why Olectra Is Turning Down Some Orders

Even with all this growth ambition, Olectra says it isn't chasing every order that comes its way. The company recently secured around 1,085 buses under the PM E-Drive programme, but Babu was clear about the approach behind it. "We want only profitable business," he said. "We are not interested in taking orders just for the sake of valuation."

That discipline has cost the company some orders too. "Some of the numbers being quoted in the market are very aggressive, which is why we are not winning some orders — the orders we do win, we are profitable on," Babu said.

The quarter's financials tell an interesting side story here. Revenue grew significantly faster than the bottom line — top line came in around Rs 575 crore, up 66%, while EBITDA rose only around 30%. Babu attributed most of that gap to Olectra's energy division rather than its bus business, pointing to a roughly 70% jump in polymer prices that hit the company's polymer insulator business hard, while the bus division itself saw only a marginal impact. Higher depreciation and finance costs tied to a plant that came online in Q4 of last year also weighed on profit. "It's basically a strong delivery for this quarter and building for the future and hence investments and depreciation play a role," he said.

It's worth noting this story is specifically about Olectra's electric bus business — it doesn't touch trucks or tippers at all. But the underlying pattern Babu described — production being ready while infrastructure lags behind — is a challenge showing up across most of India's electric commercial vehicle industry right now, not just buses.

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Frequently Asked Questions on Olectra's Delivery Ramp-Up

Q1. How many electric buses is Olectra delivering right now?

Ans. Olectra delivered 358 electric buses in the latest quarter, with plans to progressively scale up to around 1,200 buses per quarter by FY28.

Q2. What's the main bottleneck to faster deliveries?

Ans. According to MD Mahesh Babu, the constraint isn't manufacturing capacity, but supply chain issues and how quickly customers and infrastructure like depots and power supply are ready to absorb the buses.

Q3. How big is Olectra's current order book?

Ans. Olectra has an order book of more than 8,000 electric buses, with 2,000-2,500 deliveries expected during FY27.

Q4. Is Olectra taking on all available orders?

Ans. No, the company says it prioritises profitable contracts and has stepped away from some orders where market pricing has been unusually aggressive.

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