Ola Launches Ola Shakti, Enters India’s Residential BESS Market with 4680 Bharat Cells

Ola Electric on Thursday unveiled Ola Shakti, its first residential Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), marking the company’s formal entry into India’s roughly ₹1 lakh crore home-storage market.

The product launch, timed for the festival season, comes with introductory pricing, reservations from today and deliveries scheduled to start on Makar Sankranti 2026 as Ola reallocates gigafactory output to support an expected surge in storage demand.

Ola said the move will allow its annual Gigafactory consumption for BESS to scale up to 5 GWh over the next couple of years and that storage demand could soon exceed the plant’s automotive cell use.

The company is pitching Ola Shakti as India’s first residential BESS that is fully designed, engineered and manufactured domestically using its in-house 4680 Bharat Cells, enabling rapid scale with “zero incremental CapEx and R&D” by reusing existing production and distribution networks.

Product & Pricing

Ola Shakti is being launched in four modular configurations, 1.5 kWh, 3 kWh, 5.2 kWh and 9.1 kWh, with introductory prices for the first 10,000 units set at ₹29,999, ₹55,999, ₹1,19,999 and ₹1,59,999 respectively.

Reservations open today at ₹999, and deliveries will begin in mid-January 2026. The company says the system can power heavy domestic loads, including air conditioners and pumps, offers charging in as little as two hours and provides up to 1.5 hours of full-load backup in the larger configurations.

Safety & Design

Ola markets Shakti as an automotive-grade system with up to 98% efficiency, IP67-rated battery enclosures for dust and water resilience, and instant 0 ms changeover from grid to backup.

The modular design supports stacking and easy scalability; software features include Time-of-Day scheduling, intelligent backup prioritisation, remote diagnostics, OTA updates, and real-time energy insights aimed at optimising household consumption and savings.

Founder and CMD Bhavish Aggarwal framed the product as an “energy-storage opportunity,” not a supply shortage: by repurposing its 4680 cell platform, gigafactory capacity and a nationwide retail footprint (over 4,000 stores), Ola says it can scale distribution quickly without major new investments.

The company positions Shakti as a solution for homes, farms and small businesses while signaling a longer roadmap toward larger, grid-scale deployments anchored on the same cell technology.

Market Context & Outlook

Industry estimates cited by Ola project the residential BESS market to expand from about ₹1 lakh crore today to over ₹3 lakh crore by 2030.

If Ola can convert its manufacturing and retail strengths into reliable product supply and after-sales service, it could capture a meaningful share of that growth. The company’s strategy also doubles as diversification from its core EV business at a time when battery technologies and storage economics are central to India’s clean-energy transition.

Execution hurdles include meeting automotive-grade cycle life and safety certifications for home use, ensuring competitive pricing beyond the introductory tranche, and delivering robust after-sales service at scale.