Investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala on India’s electric vehicle market

Indian billionaire trader Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is betting on automaker Tata Motors as one particular of the winners of India’s rising electric car or truck current market.

“I feel the biggest and the finest player in electrical cars and trucks in India is likely to be Tata Motors,” Jhunjhunwala advised CNBC’s “Street Indications Asia,” on Tuesday.

“I am a big shareholder of Tata Motors. I am playing the EV tale via Tata Motors,” the trader claimed.

He defined that valuation will not ultimately come to a decision who will get the race for electrical vehicles. Alternatively, massive organizations that have manufacturing and expenditure capabilities, distribution channels, output knowledge and the capacity to style and design fantastic vehicles are sooner or later going to arrive out ahead, in accordance to Jhunjhunwala.

“I imagine it is really heading to be the Mercedes, the Volkswagens, and the Tata Motors, who are going to be the serious winners in the electrical race,” he reported, introducing that yet another issue needed to succeed in India is to be ready to customise the vehicles for Indian highway problems — for example, the capability to push those vehicles on flooded streets.

India is also a cost-mindful market in which electric automobile utilization is most likely to depend on the variety of incentives the authorities provides, the trader explained. Infrastructure, this sort of as charging stations, however requirements to be designed out for prevalent adoption. But, Jhunjhunwala explained, India is “all set as any producing nation, but, I believe the pace of readiness is likely to go up like anything.”

Both of those Tata Motors and competitor Mahindra & Mahindra currently market electric autos. U.S. electric vehicle giant Tesla is reportedly making ready to open up an electric powered motor vehicle production unit in South India.

Signage for Tata Motors displayed at the company’s headquarters in Mumbai, India, on Jan. 27, 2018.

Dhiraj Singh | Bloomberg | Getty Visuals

Diversified money services business Motilal Oswal this month advised CNBC a good deal of the exhilaration in India’s electric car market is coming from ancillary areas this kind of as battery producing.

Amongst the automakers, the agency mentioned it prefers Maruti Suzuki — India’s greatest carmaker — simply because of its strong distribution community even nevertheless Maruti alone is not rather as upbeat on electric powered cars but.

India is trying to both cut down its dependency on oil and increase its air high-quality. That is probable to spur a press into electric powered cars.

Reuters noted previous 12 months that India has prospective ideas to supply $4.6 billion in incentives to organizations setting up state-of-the-art battery production facilities as section of its attempts to endorse the use of electrical automobiles. The state formerly authorized a scheme to subsidize the sale of electric and hybrid cars.

In this month’s once-a-year spending plan for the fiscal calendar year that begins on April 1, India announced a voluntary motor vehicle scrapping policy to stage out aged automobiles that contribute to the country’s poor air high quality.