Odisha EV Charging Tender: 170 PM E-DRIVE Sites, Bids Close 26 October

Odisha Opens 170 PM E-DRIVE Charging Locations to CPOs

The State Transport Authority (STA), Odisha issued the Odisha EV charging tender on 1 October 2026 under Tender Reference No. 17486/TC. It invites charge point operators to supply, install, commission and run public EV charging stations at 170 locations with 692 chargers, funded through PM E-DRIVE, for ten years. On BHEL’s EVC portal the package is proposal PMEDRIVE/STA_ODISHA/P0304, and the cover page puts the project cost at about ₹40.51 crore. This brief is for CPOs, charger manufacturers and fuel retailers deciding whether to bid. Bidders have eleven days left: online submissions close on 26 October 2026 at 17:00.

What the Odisha EV Charging Tender Covers

The winning bidder takes on the whole lifecycle: supply, installation, commissioning, and operation and maintenance of public charging stations and a small number of battery swapping stations. STA identifies every site. The contract runs ten years from the Appointed Date, and each station must reach commercial operation within 180 days of its site being handed over. STA can substitute locations with Ministry of Heavy Industries (MHI) approval.

A twin-city network with many light-EV chargers

Bhubaneswar and Cuttack hold 101 of the 170 sites, so this is mostly one metro area with four smaller towns attached. Puri is the outlier: its 30 sites cluster around the railway station, the temple-town parking lots and the beach, so demand there will follow pilgrim and tourist seasons. Annexure-A sets the charger mix site by site. Our tally of it comes to 291 light-EV chargers at 12 kW for e-2W and e-3W, 372 DC chargers at 60 kW, 25 at 240 kW and four 50 kW battery swapping stations, which adds up to the 692 listed. The connected load is about 32 MW. Bidders may upgrade a site’s configuration at their own cost but may not downgrade it. With 42% of the chargers being 12 kW units, this is a two- and three-wheeler network as much as a car one.

How the Bid Is Won: QCBS and the Service Charge

Bids are scored under Quality-cum-Cost Based Selection (QCBS): 60% technical, 40% financial. The bid with the highest combined score, called H1, is the preferred bidder. The technical bid is marked out of 100, and only bidders scoring 70 or more have their price bids opened. Seventy-five of those marks reward size and track record: turnover (15), years as a government-agency CPO (10), number of states (10), cumulative installed capacity (15), DC capacity (15) and operational stations (10). The remaining 25 come from a technical presentation, and 5 of those cover the technology solution: charger technology, CMS, cybersecurity, scalability and OCPP compliance.

The price bid is not a lump sum. Under clause 1.12, the most a driver can be charged is the prevailing Odisha DISCOM tariff, plus ₹1/kWh in land-use charges, plus the service charge the bidder quotes, with taxes extra. Operators may sell below that ceiling, including different prices at different times of day. If Odisha introduces Time-of-Day tariffs, the ceiling moves with them. The service charge is the one number you control, and it counts for 40% of the score. A low quote improves your chance of winning but sets the most you can earn per kWh for ten years. If H1 declines the contract, H2 must match both of H1’s prices, not just one.

The land-use charge works more like a pass-through tax than a cost you can manage. The CPO collects it, then deposits it in the first week of each month under a Finance Department head of account. Clause 2.8 makes the energy recorded and validated by the CMS “the primary and final basis” for working out what is owed. Every 1,00,000 kWh dispensed means ₹1,00,000 paid to the state, and late payment carries 12% annual interest. Your CMS meter readings are therefore what the state bills you on.

Who Can Bid, and the Track-Record Bar

The financial pre-qualification is modest. A bidder must be an Indian company, partnership or LLP with average annual turnover of at least ₹5 crore over FY 2022-23 to FY 2024-25, positive net worth in each of those years, and no blacklisting. The operating record is the real filter. The bidder, or the lead member of a consortium, must be one of the charge point operators with at least one year running public stations for a State or Central Government body, PSU or urban local body, counted from its first qualifying work order. The technical criteria then add three requirements:

• 6,400 kW of cumulative installed capacity with government agencies in the last five financial years, at least 3,200 kW of it DC from chargers of 30 kW or more. (The RFP writes these figures as “kWh”.)
• At least 85 operational public charging stations under government, PPP, revenue-share or service-charge models.
• Multi-state presence as a government CPO. The eligibility table contradicts itself here: the requirement column says “one or more” states, but the evidence column asks for proof from three or more. Check the e-procurement portal for any clarification issued after the pre-bid meeting.

A consortium can have no more than two members, and promoters must hold at least 51% for three years from the Appointed Date (listed companies are exempt). The capacity and station-count tests let the bidder count “together with its consortium members”, but the government-CPO experience must belong to the lead. So a newer operator or a charger manufacturer has one realistic route into this tender: partner with an established government CPO, and let that CPO lead.

Dates and Money: What It Costs to Bid

Bids are filed only on the Odisha e-procurement portal (enivida). The full RFP is available on the BHEL EVC portal. The RFP is 122 pages, and Annexure-A, the location list, gives coordinates and the charger mix for every site. Start your site-level revenue model there.

What PM E-DRIVE Pays For in Odisha

PM E-DRIVE now has an overall outlay of ₹11,900 crore. MHI raised it from ₹10,900 crore through S.O. 4424(E) on 10 August 2026, but the RFP still quotes the older figure. ₹2,000 crore of the outlay is earmarked for public charging. How much the subsidy covers depends on the site’s category, and in this tender most sites fall in Category B. Our guide to EV charging station subsidy in India explains how the scheme works in detail.

The release terms matter more for cash flow than the percentages do. The State Nodal Agency claims the subsidy and receives it, and it pays the CPO only after MHI has released the funds. Payment comes in two tranches under clause 1.11. The first 70% is released once you show proof that the DISCOM demand note for upstream infrastructure has been paid, evidence that the chargers comply with the Phased Manufacturing Programme (PMP), and a certificate that they meet the latest Ministry of Power charging standards. The final 30% comes after commissioning and energisation, on an undertaking that the chargers are commissioned, PMP-compliant and onboarded on MHI’s National Unified Hub. On the 34 Category C sites the subsidy covers no charger hardware at all, so the CPO funds the EVSE there.

The Software Obligations Behind the Bid

Most PM E-DRIVE RFPs mention a monitoring system. The Odisha EV charging tender, in clauses 3.4 and 3.5 and the SLA schedule, says exactly what the software must do:

• Your own CMS and consumer app. The technical criteria require an operational CMS and mobile app capable of integration with the National Unified Hub and PM E-DRIVE systems, and state that a “Third party Application shall not be considered”. The bid needs a live demonstration and sample CMS reports.
• OCPP and open interfaces. Every charger must support the latest applicable OCPP, with remote monitoring, diagnostics and firmware updates. The network must be vendor-neutral and integrate with roaming platforms and third-party applications through open, non-proprietary interfaces. If the standards are revised during the contract, upgrades are at the CPO’s cost.
• An OCPI-capable cloud CMS. The CMS must support the latest applicable OCPI version, or any protocol the Government of India prescribes, and show in real time charger availability, sessions, energy, transactions, faults and uptime.
• Regulator access and national integration. STA needs secure API and dashboard access. The CMS must integrate with the PM E-DRIVE and MHI portals, and every station must be onboarded to the National Unified Hub as soon as it is commissioned. Drivers must be able to see availability and tariffs, pay by UPI and book in advance.
• Uptime is measured by your CMS, and CMS failures count against you. Each station must achieve 90% monthly uptime, measured through the CMS and validated by STA. The penalty is ₹2,000 per station for every 1% below 90%. Three straight months below 85% risks forfeiting the performance security, and six months means termination. If the CMS goes down or stops sending data through the bidder’s fault, that time counts as SLA downtime.
• Site operations: 24×7 CCTV at every station, with remote access for STA and at least 30 days of footage kept, plus monthly reports on energy, sessions, revenue and uptime for every charger.

Put that list next to the price bid. In this contract, the state audits your uptime from your CMS and bills land-use charges from the energy it records, and an outage of your CMS counts as station downtime. So the choice of software matters as much as the choice of hardware. A station sitting at 85% uptime costs ₹10,000 a month in penalties. If all 170 sites slipped to that level, the bill would reach ₹17 lakh a month, and that is before the performance security is at risk. Most operators who meet terms like these do not build a CMS themselves. They run EV charging management software under their own brand, which also answers the rule against third-party apps. A white-label charging platform gives the bidder its own app and dashboard. OCPI roaming integration covers the open-interface clause, and per-charger uptime reports give STA the evidence it asks for.

Previously in this series: Telangana’s 169-station TGREDCO tender and KSEB Kerala’s 209-station package, both under PM E-DRIVE.

Source: RFP for Selection of Charge Point Operators under PM E-DRIVE — State Transport Authority / Transport Commissioner, Odisha, Tender Ref. No. 17486/TC dated 1 October 2026, published on the BHEL EVC portal as proposal PMEDRIVE/STA_ODISHA/P0304.