Regulatory Challenges Behind Us: Ola Electric’s Bhavish Aggarwal

Ola Electric founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said that regulatory issues are behind the company as it focusses “on scaling revenue and operating leverage” as it “marches towards sustainable profitability” in FY26.

Addressing the issue of lack of trade certificates for its stores, the CEO said that the company has been in touch with “all” the state-level RTOs to make sure that the stores are either compliant or have already filed for the required certifications. 

Notably, in March, amid reports of RTO raids across its stores in states like Goa, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, the company said it received notices in four states with regard to trade certificates for a few of its stores. The reports also mentioned closures of a number of Ola Electric stores across the country, which the company hasn’t officially acknowledged. It said it operates a network of 4,000 stores across India. 

In the call, Aggarwal said that the EV maker has been “fully engaged” with the government agencies. 

For context, the company was also under the scanner of heavy industries ministry (MHI) and road transport and highways ministry (MoRTH), besides state RTOs. 

“From our side, we are very fully engaged with the requests (from the agencies) we have received. There might be some further queries or news as they close their final request for further information in their followups with us. But largely, we don’t see any major risk for the business on these regulatory aspects,” he added. 

The second major regulatory issue for Ola Electric in Q4 was due to mismatch in its registrations on the Vahan portal and the sales number claimed by it in February. 

Aggarwal said during the call that Ola Electric had received total orders for 25,207 units in February. Of this, about 3,000 orders were cancelled while the company is yet to initiate deliveries for about 2,000 orders. “The remaining have all been largely registered,” Aggarwal asserted.

It is pertinent to note that MoRTH issued notices to Ola Electric over the sales mismatch for February. 

While the company claimed sales of over 25,000 units in the month, only about 8,000 units were registered on the Vahan portal. The sales numbers also included pre-bookings of the then yet to be launched EV bike Ola Roadster and Gen 3 escooters. The company began deliveries of the ebikes only last week. 

The discrepancy in numbers was a result of the company renegotiating the terms of agreements with its registration agencies and then moving the process in-house.

“We internalised the vehicle registration process, bringing it in-house and phasing out reliance on third-party agents. This change caused a temporary registration backlog in Feb ’25 but has since been resolved,” the company said in its shareholders’ letter today. 

Ola Electric also found itself in controversy in Q3 FY25, primarily due to complaints about its after-sales service. 

On the journey since its public listing, Aggarwal said that the company has learnt a lot of important lessons and is now confident of managing operating risk in a matured way. 

“Going forward, you will see us be much more deeper as well as thoughtful about capital allocation and operating risk. And as a result we have actually sequenced our capital allocation into new products as well as focus a lot more on institutionalisation of operating processes, especially in the front end and the compliance and risk aspect of the business,” the CEO said. 

In Q4 FY25, the company’s consolidated net loss more than doubled to INR 870 Cr from INR 416 Cr in the year-ago quarter. Meanwhile, operating revenue plummeted 62% to INR 611 Cr from INR 1,598 Cr in the same quarter last year.

Despite this, Ola Electric is eyeing EBITDA profitability for its auto segment in FY26.

Shares of Ola Electric ended today’s trading session 0.60% higher at INR 53.24 on the BSE.