Ola Electric In Regulatory Muddle, Endiya Partners’ AI Playbook & More

Ola Electric In A Muddle

There seems to be no end to Ola Electric’s glitches. At a time when the EV maker is struggling to make its stakeholders content, either by offering a bang for their buck on the stock market or by improving its after-sales services, it seems to have hit yet another snag. 

What Has Happened? At least six of the EV maker’s stores in Madhya Pradesh and 26 outlets in Maharashtra were raided by regional transport officials a few days ago. Local authorities have impounded a total of 60 electric scooters in the two states. 

The Core Of The Crisis: Well, the crackdown comes close on the heels of a complaint that the EV maker has been setting up showrooms, stores and service centres across Maharashtra without necessary trade certificates.  

MHI Calls Out The Sales Bluff: Meanwhile, MHI is currently probing discrepancies between Ola Electric’s reported sales figures and actual vehicle registrations. While the company has publicly claimed to have sold 25,000 EVs in February, the VAHAN portal shows just 8,600 registrations.

Dousing Fires On Multiple Fronts: Amid the spate of crises, Ola Electric has much to make up for. This includes managing its mounting losses (INR 564 Cr in Q3 FY25), falling sales, and dwindling stock prices (more than 39% on a YTD basis) while fixing its deliveries and after-sales services. 

While it remains to be seen how authorities respond to these data discrepancies, here is what Ola Electric has gotten itself into this time. Continue reading… 

From The Editor’s Desk

Decoding Endiya Partners’ AI Playbook: Not much has changed for the VC firm in the past decade. The fund’s investment theses have continued to embrace early-stage, product-led startups. With Fund III, the VC now plans to sharpen its focus on AI, semiconductors, and robotics.

Magenta Mobility Bags $11.5 Mn: The electric mobility startup has raised the capital as part of its Pre-Series B round from BP Tech Ventures and Morgan Stanley India Infrastructure. The startup provides EVs to ecommerce platforms for mid and last-mile deliveries. 

BYJU’S Saga Continues To Unfold: During an NCLT hearing, the counsel of the edtech startup’s founders accused the former IRP Pankaj Srivastava of delaying the submission of BCCI’s settlement application. The founders said BYJU’S could have averted much.

PayU Picks Up 43% Stake In Mindgate: The Prosus-backed platform has acquired a stake in the payments infrastructure startup for an undisclosed amount. With this, PayU will look to leverage Mindgate’s solutions to sharpen its real-time payments stack. 

X Drags Govt To Court Again: The Elon Musk-led social media platform has filed a petition before the Karnataka High Court to challenge the union government’s use of Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act to block content.

DroneAcharya Rejigs Board: Raj Kumar Srivastava has resigned as an independent director on the startup’s board to “fulfil other professional responsibilities”. This comes two months after Harshal Kher resigned as DroneAcharya’s company secretary and compliance officer. 

Raids At Amazon, Flipkart: Days after carrying out search operations at premises linked to the two ecommerce giants, the Bureau of Indian Standards conducted another series of raids at their warehouses in Tamil Nadu for selling non-certified products. 

Gates Foundation To Push IndiaAI Mission: The IT ministry and the foundation will soon sign a MoU to build AI solutions in various areas. Meanwhile, the Centre has received 120 applications to build foundational AI models, some of which will be greenlit by March-end.

Inc42 Startup Spotlight

How Writesonic’s AI Agents Are Helping Marketers Ace The SEO Game 

With automation at its peak, more and more businesses are looking for AI-led solutions to help them save costs and make their teams leaner and more effective. Pouncing on this opportunity, Samanyou Garg founded Writesonic in 2023 to help businesses produce high-quality and cost-effective content at lightning speed. 

Not stopping there, the startup also launched new AI agents that can automate the tasks of SEO teams. The Delhi NCR-based startup’s offerings help marketing teams enhance their Google ratings, speed up keyword research, and optimise content. 

Currently the startup claims to serve 30,000 paying customers, including the likes of Microsoft, Deloitte, Razorpay, Visa, Optum, and HP, among others. 

Going forward, the startup plans to integrate its AI offering with Microsoft 365, which will enable its clients to seamlessly incorporate Writesonic’s AI content marketing and SEO capabilities into their workflows.