How India's CV biggies missed the bus on a ₹10,900 crore tender
New-age electric bus manufacturers have stormed India’s biggest tender, picking up nearly 80% of the 10,900 e-buses on offer as part of the ₹10,900-crore PM E-Drive scheme, leaving legacy players with little to show for their efforts.Flush with recent investments, companies like PMI Electro Mobility and Eka Mobility offered aggressive, lucrative pricing, securing contracts for 5,210 and 3,485 e-buses, respectively.Among other manufacturers, only Olectra Greentech—an established electric bus manufacturer and a subsidiary of Hyderabad-based EPC company Megha Engineering—managed a partial win, bagging 1,785 e-buses.Bigger names such as Tata Motors and VE Commercial Vehicles (VECV) were caught off guard when the results, revealed on Wednesday, showed they had not won a single contract, according to three executives directly aware of the development. Chennai-based Ashok Leyland missed the tender entirely due to a technical glitch and has approached the Delhi High Court.Government officials and industry executives spoke on the condition of anonymity as the results are so far only known to the bidders and haven’t been made public.
Final letters of award to each player are expected to reach in the next few weeks.PMI Electro and Eka Mobility, the two big winners, triumphed in a bidding process that saw prices lower than expected. A government official told Mint on the condition of anonymity that prices discovered varied for each city, and were lower by about 5-15% than previously estimated.“There was aggressive competition where margins were as low as 20 paise in some instances.
The new-age players emerged victorious as they found a better way to offer their e-buses at cheaper prices,” the first executive cited earlier said. “In
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