What Is Ola Shakti? Inverter? Power Bank? We Explain

Ola Electric has moved beyond scooters. On October 16, the company unveiled Ola Shakti, a residential battery energy storage system that marks its entry into what CEO Bhavish Aggarwal calls a Rs 1 lakh crore market opportunity. The device is neither a conventional inverter nor a power bank, though it shares characteristics with both.

Ola Shakti is a battery energy storage system, or BESS, a technology that stores electricity for use when needed. Unlike traditional inverters that primarily provide backup power during outages, or power banks designed for charging small devices, a BESS integrates storage, intelligent energy management and grid interaction into one system. It stores energy from the grid or solar panels and releases it during peak demand, power cuts or when electricity rates are high.

The product comes in four configurations: 1.5 kWh at Rs 29,999, 3 kWh at Rs 55,999, 5.2 kWh at Rs 1,19,999 and 9.1 kWh at Rs 1,59,999. These are introductory prices for the first 10,000 units. Bookings have opened at Rs 999, with deliveries scheduled to begin on Makar Sankranti 2026.

Aggarwal positioned the launch as a strategic expansion for Ola Electric, which he deliberately named with 'Electric' rather than 'Auto' to signal broader ambitions.

The company will manufacture Ola Shakti at its Tamil Nadu Gigafactory using the same 4680 Bharat Cells it developed for its electric scooters. This allows Ola to scale production without new capital expenditure or research and development costs, leveraging existing manufacturing capacity and its network of over 4,000 retail stores.

The system can power heavy household appliances including air conditioners, refrigerators and induction cookers. It also has applications for farms, where it can run water pumps, and for small businesses needing reliable power backup.

Charging time is two hours, and the larger configurations provide up to 1.5 hours of full load backup. The system claims efficiency of up to 98 per cent.

What sets Ola Shakti apart from conventional inverters is its intelligence and versatility. Traditional inverters offer basic power backup with limited control.

Ola Shakti includes features such as Time of Day scheduling, which allows users to charge when electricity is cheaper and discharge during peak rate periods. It also has intelligent backup prioritisation, which decides which appliances receive power first during an outage, and remote diagnostics with over-the-air software updates.

The system operates across a wide input voltage range of 120V to 290V, protecting against voltage fluctuations. Its batteries carry an IP67 rating, meaning they are sealed against dust and water, including monsoon conditions.

The instant changeover time is 0 milliseconds, preventing any interruption when switching from grid to battery power. Users control and monitor the system through a mobile application that provides real-time energy insights and optimisation.

While power banks are portable devices with small capacities measured in milliamp hours, designed for charging phones and laptops, Ola Shakti operates at a different scale. Even the smallest 1.5 kWh variant can power multiple appliances for extended periods.

The larger 9.1 kWh model can, according to Aggarwal, provide backup to a double storey house or a farmhouse for hours. The system's modular design allows units to be stacked, potentially scaling up to 27 kWh or more to power small communities.

Aggarwal framed the product around energy storage rather than energy shortage. He said the market always assumed the Gigafactory would only produce automotive cells, but that the biggest application would be grid energy storage and battery storage systems. Ola expects its annual BESS consumption to reach 5 GWh over the next few years, potentially exceeding its automotive battery use.

The company plans to use its existing service centres and distribution network for Ola Shakti, avoiding the need to build separate infrastructure. While the initial launch targets residential customers, Aggarwal indicated that a business-to-business product for commercial and grid-scale applications is in development. He described this as a container grid product that would be launched later.

Ola Shakti represents a shift in how households and businesses might access and control energy. Rather than treating power purely as a utility delivered by the grid, the system allows users to store, manage and optimise their energy consumption.

For homes with solar panels, it provides a way to store daytime generation for use at night. For those without solar, it offers backup security and potential savings through time-of-use arbitrage.

The technology builds on principles used in larger grid-scale battery storage systems that balance supply and demand across the electricity network.

By bringing this capability to residential and small commercial users, Ola is betting that distributed energy storage will become as common as mobile phones have become in communications. Whether that vision materialises will depend on product reliability, pricing competitiveness and the company's ability to service what could become a substantial installed base across diverse applications and geographies.