A Day After Bhavish Aggarwal’s Social Media Spat, Ola Electric Shares Down By 9%

Shares of Ola Electric tumbled over 9% to INR 89.71 apiece in early trading hours today (October 7) as dissatisfied customers flooded social media platforms with complaints against the company’s after sales and service quality of escooters.

Ola’s escooter servicing has come under scrutiny yet again after the company’s founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal recently engaged in a verbal spat on social media with stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra.

Kamra took to X on Sunday (October 7) and posted a photo showing a horde of Ola escooters parked outside a dealership, gathering dust, seemingly waiting for servicing.

“Do Indian consumers have a voice? Do they deserve this? Two wheelers are many daily wage workers’ lifeline …” the post read.

Kamra also tagged union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari in the post, and asked if “this is how Indians will get to using EVs?” 

Responding to the post, Aggarwal accused Kamra of taking money to criticise the company after a “failed comedy career”, adding that Ola is “expanding its network fast and backlogs will be cleared soon.”

The comedian called Aggarwal “arrogant and substandard”, to which he replied saying “Chot lagi? Dard hua? Aaja service center. Bahut kaam Hai. (Did it hurt. It’s very less. Come to service center). I will pay better than your flop shows pay you,.”

Aggarwal’s X war with Kamra continued even as thousands of user complaints over Ola’s unsatisfactory servicing piled up in the comments section of the post. 

An X user pointed out Ola founder’s ‘crass’ language and objected to his ‘arrogance’ in dismissing customer complaints around the after sales and service quality of the company’s electric scooters.

“Imagine a middle-class person saving 3-4 months of salary to buy an OLA, only for it to have problems in the first week and then park at your service center for days,” another user commented.

The development comes at a time when Ola Electric is seeing its market dominance eroded in the electric two-wheeler space by new players and facing a barrage of customer complaints related to its escooters and after-sales servicing.

Ola’s escooter registrations slipped 11% month-on-month (MoM) to 23,965 units in September – the lowest monthly vehicle sales since October last year, when registrations stood at 23,594 units. From a little over 30% in August, Ola’s market share dipped further to 27%.

The Bhavish Aggarwal-led startup is also facing growing public ire over unsatisfactory servicing of EVs. Last month, a customer set an Ola Electric showroom ablaze in Karnataka over unsatisfactory servicing of a recently-purchased escooter.  

To address user complaints, Ola Electric recently launched “HyperService” to offer “one-day resolution” of service-related issues. The EV manufacturer also informed the bourses that its company secretary and compliance officer Pramendra Tomar resigned from the company with effect from October 1 due to personal reasons and commitments.

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