New Delhi: Wise Travel India Ltd, a B2B transport solutions provider, plans to add 1,000 electric vehicles to its fleet this year as part of its overall sustainable mobility drive, according to its founder and CEO Ashok Vashist. The company is expanding in India’s tier II cities like Chandigarh, Jaipur, Coimbatore and Indore, and looking to have an international presence in Saudi Arabia and far east countries.
“This year, our main target is on sustainability, where we are inducting vehicles, which are electric and bio-CNG…We already have more than 300 cars, which are electric. This year, we will be inducting more than 1,000 electric cars and electric buses,” Vashist told PTI.
The company, which operates under the WTicabs brand, has also third-party and individual-owned vehicles in its fleet. For electric vehicles, he said most of these would be primarily company-owned.
When asked about investment for the same, he said, “Somewhere around INR 50 crore will be made on these vehicles, and there is a combination of debt and equity, which will happen”.
For the EV initiative, he said at some of the large hubs like in Bengaluru and Delhi, the company will install solar panels to generate electricity, supply it to the grid and take it back to make charging from renewable and sustainable sources possible.
On the overall sustainable mobility initiative, he said, “We are not only talking about electric, but we are talking about sustainability as a whole, about being robust. We are talking about EVs, bio-CNG and hydrogen also”.
On bio-CNG, he said, “This is something new which has come, and we will be the first company to start commuting people through bio-CNG fuels. This is absolutely sustainable. Let’s see how much we invest in the bio-CNG project”.
At present, WTicabs has a fleet of around 8,000 vehicles and a presence across different parts of the country. It serves over 700 corporate clients with 17 airport counters.
On the company’s international expansion, Vashist said, “We have opened in Dubai. We want to go to Saudi Arabia. We are looking at some of the far east countries as well”.
In India, he said, “We are looking to expand in tier II cities and also consolidate position in all the major metros”.
Even corporates are moving to tier II cities like Jaipur, Coimbatore, Indore and Bhubaneswar, and these cities are getting a lot of traction with some very large IT, ITeS and financial companies moving there, he added.
Besides, he said, WTicabs will also “try and explore some new avenues of mobility, which can be a corporate commute, services like corporate hubs to residential condominiums, where there is no tie up with corporates but primarily a B2C kind of arrangements for the corporate clients” for future growth.
In revenue terms, Vashist said the company closed FY24 at INR 409 crore, up from INR 250 crore in FY23.
As for FY25, he said the company is targeting at least 30-35 per cent growth.
“That has been the CAGR till now. So, we should continue with the same kind of growth,” he said.
