Ola Electric: Cutting the noise and next steps
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Ola Electric Mobility Ltd. had a muted debut on the stock exchange in early August.
However, the company’s launch of its e-motorbike series, Ola Roadster, took care of that. The stock rallied 100% after the Roadster’s launch in mid-August. However, the enthusiasm was short-lived.
The gravity of the rising consumer complaints about the company’s scooters pulled the stock price down 40% from its peak. The recent spat between Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal and comedian Kunal Kamra only added fuel to the fire. Consumers flocked to social media platform X expressing their concerns and anger around the lack of response from Ola service centers.
Quality and service issues are not new in automotive and new technology. In 2022, Ola Electric recalled 1,441 Ola S1 Pro electric scooters after some customers complained on social media of technical problems. In March 2023, Ola Electric even offered a free “upgrade" of the front fork for over 200,000 scooters after a rider got injured when the front suspension of an Ola S1 Pro broke.
While these issues did make headlines, they didn’t spark enough of an uproar to get the attention of the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) and the Ministry of Heavy Industries (MHI), until now. So what exactly happened? Technology is a sector with immense potential to scale. Quality issues have always plagued new technologies, be it Samsung’s Note 7 (2016) or Boeing’s (737 Max).
What matters is how a company handles the situation and regains customer trust. The social media spat between Aggarwal and Kamra acted as a tipping point for the quality issues that have plagued Ola Electric’s e-scooters. It focused the spotlight on the negative comments and criticism
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