Is It The Scooter Or The Service? Ola Electric Reveals The Real Reason Behind Sales Drop

Ola Electric has admitted that service execution gaps have impacted brand trust, leading to a slowdown in sales. In an earnings call on Friday, the company leadership addressed the concerns that have dominated social media conversations, but insisted the problem lies with "service scale" rather than the product itself.

Deepak Rastogi, the new CFO, stated that while execution gaps had hurt trust among prospective buyers, "this is a service scale issue and not a product quality issue." To support this claim, the company cited an independent survey indicating over 90 per cent product satisfaction. Rastogi also noted that warranty provisions for the current financial year are expected in the range of 2 per cent to 3 per cent, claiming this is "among the lowest in the Indian EV industry."

Bhavish Aggarwal, Chairman and Managing Director, reinforced this distinction. "Most customers when I meet them across stores and when I travel they say sir your product is very good we want to buy a product but please improve your service accessibility and service turnaround times," Aggarwal said.

The company acknowledged where it is failing: accessibility and turnaround times at service centres. These issues have created "brand noise," causing prospective customers to hold back. Aggarwal was candid about the impact and the timeline for recovery. "The headline here is yes there's a service challenge we are fixing it... We do have some journey to cover and brand trust will take its time to recover," he said.

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To address this, Ola has launched a "hyper service" initiative, redesigning parts availability and technician training. The company claims service backlogs have reduced by nearly 50 per cent.

On how things are panning out, the company describes this period as a "structural reset." Ola has opted to cut costs and fix fundamentals rather than chase short-term volume. Aggarwal dismissed concerns about immediate market share, stating, "We don't worry about short term market share we are fixing the service challenges in a very structural institutional way." The leadership believes that once service stabilises, the "product truth" will drive sales recovery.