Ola Electric Surge: Charging Towards a Greener Future Amidst Service Challenges!

Ola Electric, led by Bhavish Agarwal, aims to revolutionize India's EV market, facing challenges in service centers as sales soar to 338,000.

Written by: Krutarth Ghosalkar

Edited by: Krutarth Ghosalkar

Last Updated: December 29, 2023

Summary: Babish Agarwal's Ola Electric, which he compares to the Tesla of the West, has grown sales of electric scooters from zero to 338,000 in about two years and aims to list on the stock market.

India's answer to Elon Musk, Bhavish Agarwal, is racing to bring India to a cleaner future by bringing millions of electric scooters to market. But some of his mechanics can't keep up.

A nationwide network of more than 400 service centers servicing and repairing the company's electric vehicles, according to a Reuters visit to 35 centers in 10 states and 36 Ola interviews from July to October. Some of the companies are showing signs of stress after soaring sales, he said. More than half of these centers (mainly in the major metropolitan areas of Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru) have employees experiencing demand that exceeds their workforce or waiting times for spare parts supplies and repairs. As a result, there is a large backlog of orders. From a few days to two weeks.

At Ola's workshop in Thane, one of the largest of his 14 centers in the Mumbai region, in an open space outside he sees more than 100 electric scooters waiting to be repaired. Many of them stood in muddy clearings, collecting dust and littered with bird droppings.

Devendra Ghuge, a service manager in Thane, told Reuters in late October that the number of cases the center was handling had increased from 200 to 300 per month to about 1,000 in the past four months, with waiting times stretched and delayed upto 2 weeks. He said the matter had come up..

Mr. Agarwal's Ola Electric, which he likens to the Tesla of the West, has grown sales of electric scooters from zero to 338,000 in about two years and is aiming to list on the stock market. The technology entrepreneur promises to banish internal combustion engines (ICE) from India, where two-wheelers dominate the roads.

"We are ending the ICE era," the 38-year-old told Reuters ahead of the launch of the new Ola electric scooter, which starts at about $1,000, on Aug. 15, India's Independence Day. ” he said. He said the company, already valued at $5.4 billion, would quadruple its annual production capacity of electric scooters to 2 million units by the beginning of the year.

Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Ola, had promised in January that customers would be able to leave their vehicles at the hub and receive same-day service in most cases.

In an August interview, he said customers are "voting with their wallets every month". However, he acknowledged that service capacity was an issue and said Ola was "aggressively" expanding its service network by adding 100 new centers and hiring more technicians.

"We have the most products on the market...and we need to expand our service network," he said. An Ola spokesperson said the Reuters report did not accurately capture the scope and quality of the company's robust and growing services business.