Ola’s upcoming electric scooter and why Bhavish Aggarwal is not happy with the leaks

The leak of Ola's upcoming e-scooters have drawn the ire of CEO Bhavish Aggarwal. The e-scooters, scheduled to be released under the Ola Electric brand, are set to be launched on August 15, and ahead of the anticipated release, a confidential media event was held by the cab aggregator. 

After the images started doing rounds, Aggarwal took to Twitter and said that the auto media sneakily took images at the event where information shares was supposed to be under embargo. Asserting that such moves did a disservice to the auto media's own credibility, he added, "Breaks the trust the brand places in them. We work really hard to make great products and entertaining events for our customers and delight them. Such instances can't have any place in a mature ecosystem."

The images are believed to be of the Ola S1X e-scooter, which is likely to follow the launch of its S1 Air scooter. Reports also suggest that the variant will serve as an entry-level variant, starting at less than Rs 1 lakh. 

A failing unicorn?

Founded in December 2010, Ola began as a cab aggregating app meant to help people find cabs conveniently. Built on the Uber model, the platform quickly took off under the leadership of co-founders Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati. 

Now a unicorn, the startup held 29 rounds of funding and raised a staggering $5 billion (Rs 41,422.32 crore) in a little more than 11 years, with their latest funding round having been held in February 2022. The company has 61 investors, of which 28 are lead investors. 

Despite this, Ola only posted its first-ever operating profit in FY21 to the tune of Rs 89.82 crore. In fact, before ever posting a profit, Ola had made four investments of over $600 million (Rs 4,971.72 crore) and six acquisitions, of which TaxiForSure was acquired for $200 million (Rs 1,656 crore) and Foodpanda India was taken over for $31.7 million (Rs 256.81 crore). 

Experiments with diversification

Over the years, Ola has been experimenting in multiple avenues, having launched subsidiary organisations such as Ola Cafe, on the lines of Swiggy and Zomato, Ola Fleet Technologies for radio taxi facilities, OlaMoney, the mobile payments platform, Ola Store, similar to Blinkit (previously Grofers) and Big Basket, and Ola Electric, the EV-manufacturing mobility platform and ride-hailing company. 

Ola had started up as a revolutionary, unprecedented app in India, which led to an initial boom in use. However, it still did not work well enough to ensure profits, likely due to the high level of experimentation that the company has since been undertaking. Not only that, but the follow-up subsidiaries have all been made on the lines of other apps that have long existed in the usually loyal and hesistant India market, leading these experiments toward failure, as evidenced by the closure of Ola Store and Ola Cafe. 

Next big hope

Ola Electric is the company's next big bet after Ola Cabs. Ola has held 10 rounds of funding in Ola Electric, in which it raised $1.2 billion (Rs 9,936.56 crore) with 10 lead investors. As India sat on the cusp of an electric vehicle boom, Ola decided to venture into electric mobility, launching Ola Electric in 2017 with the vision to procure e-rickshaws, electric cabs and e-buses from manufacturers and use them as the vehicles for Ola Cabs. 

In 2020, however, the company acquired Etergo, an Amsterdam-based electric scooter manufacturer and announced its decision to also start its own line of electric scooters in India. 

The trend was favourable among the market, with the company recording over 1 lakh pre-bookings for Ola Scooter in July 2021 within the first 24 hours of reservation opening. This trend also followed S1 and S1 Pro models. The company is also working on launching its first electric Sedan, and has made a strategic investment in Israel-based StoreDot, which produces batteries that have extreme fast charging (XFC) technology. 

Is it working?

However, all has not been well, as a fire was reported in one of their products in Pune last year, after which it recalled 1,441 scooters, in what Ola Electric called a "pre-emptive measure" to investigate the issue. What had been a rapid trend of adoption of e-scooters has now somewhat dampened due to e-scooters and e-bikes from varied manufacturers catching on fire in multiple incidents. This has the potential of turning the tide against Ola Electric's aims. 

When it comes to financials, Ola Electric reported a loss of over Rs 1,100 crore in FY23, as per media reports, just as it was preparing for its IPO launch. Still, it is the market leader in India for e-scooters with a 32 per cent share.