Kya Chal Raha Hai At Ola? Kuchh Bhi

“Before you see it, you have to hear it,” Ola Electric’s Head of Design Kripa Ananthan says, standing alongside her boss at the launch of the Roadster X motorcycle.

“There’s nothing to hear!”

“So, this is something, Kripa, you and I have debated a lot. This is something that the motorcycling community…this is a debate…”

*music fills in*

“...people over a hundred years…”

*more music*

“What are we doing?,” Aggarwal looks at the organisers.

*more music, lights dim*

“Let’s tone it down.”

‘ANYTHING MORE’ flashes on the jumbotron. 

“We’ll come to ‘ANYTHING MORE’, but before that…this debate in the…okay, we have the bike also!”

*Rider rides in on the Roadster X*

“We always forget the product!,” Aggarwal says. “That’s the Roadster X, guys!”

“Before you see it, you have to hear it,” Ola Electric’s Head of Design Kripa Ananthan says, standing alongside her boss at the launch of the Roadster X motorcycle.

“There’s nothing to hear!”

“So, this is something, Kripa, you and I have debated a lot. This is something that the motorcycling community…this is a debate…”

*music fills in*

“...people over a hundred years…”

*more music*

“What are we doing?,” Aggarwal looks at the organisers.

*more music, lights dim*

“Let’s tone it down.”

‘ANYTHING MORE’ flashes on the jumbotron. 

“We’ll come to ‘ANYTHING MORE’, but before that…this debate in the…okay, we have the bike also!”

*Rider rides in on the Roadster X*

“We always forget the product!,” Aggarwal says. “That’s the Roadster X, guys!”

The event lasted for 10-15 minutes more, following which, Aggarwal walked off without a photo op — the motorcycle wasn’t “ready” yet. A quick chat with the communications team and journalists later, he left the building.  

The glitzy event to launch Ola Electric’s first motorcycle was a glitchy affair. Perhaps, that’s emblematic of the current state of affairs at one of India’s largest EV makers.

A lot has happened at Ola Electric in the past couple of days. And not a lot.

On Monday, NDTV Profit reported that Ola Electric has effected a second round of layoffs in less than six months to cut costs and turn profitable. About 1,400-1,500 people are being let go, people aware of the matter said. About half of them are contractual workers who were brought on board to operate the 4,000 experience centres opened in December.

The office is as suffocating as ever, one of the people cited above said, with the Ola HQ increasingly resembling a revolving-door workplace. Team leads are still getting fired on a weekly basis. Notable among them are:

• Gajanand Umarekar, director - India sales and GTM strategy.

• Vikram Pradeep, vice president, head of corporate finance and investor relations.

• Bharathraj Jayaraman, head of system integration.

On top of that, Aggarwal is now doing an Elon Musk at the Koramangala HQ.

Taking a page out of Musk’s ‘DOGE’ playbook, Aggarwal wants all Ola Group employees to send a weekly email on the work done. That would form the basis of whether they get to keep their job or not.

“We’re starting ‘Kya Chal Raha Hai?’ — a simple way to share your weekly updates directly with me and your managers, starting today,” Aggarwal wrote in his message to employees. “Please send a brief update to your manager and kyachalrahahai@olagroup.in with 3-5 bullet points about what you got done last week.”

“Keep it simple and to the point. Use the email subject: ‘weekly updates’... Going forward, we will expect the email before Sunday EOD. Everyone has to send this, no exceptions.”

The layoffs are but only one of the steps that Aggarwal is taking to turn profitable.

Ola Electric needs to consistently sell 50,000 units per month  to achieve profitability, he had said at an analyst call after the company’s December quarter earnings.

The Ola Electric layoffs are a fallout of the expansion that hasn’t translated into sales. Some of the experience centres aren’t even selling one scooter a month.

To sustain 4,000 outlets, you need monthly sales of about 200,000 units, an analyst told me. At 25,000-odd, Ola Electric is at one-eighth of that number.

Ola Electric has set up an in-house team to process vehicle registrations at one-fifth of the cost charged by vendor Rosmerta Digital Services Pvt., but is yet to pay back its dues. The company has shut down nearly all state distribution centres to directly ship electric scooters to experience centres.

To be sure, the troubles are still piling on.

The company has missed the deadline to start commercial operations of its Gigafactory. Its Roadster X motorcycle — seen as the ticket to profitability—isn’t roadworthy yet.

What next for Ola Electric? Only time will tell. Watch this space for more.

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Samsung Mulls US Battery Plant Despite Trump Anti-EV Stance: The South Korean firm already has plans to build plants in collaboration with GM and Stellantis in Indiana and has already completed another facility with Stellantis. Read more.

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Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. has overtaken Hyundai Motor India Ltd. as India’s second largest carmaker for the first time, underscoring the “SUV-fication” of the world’s third largest car market.

SUV sales of the Scorpio maker  rose 19% year-on-year to 50,420 units in February 2025 as against 42,401 units in the year-ago period, according to an exchange filing on Saturday. In comparison, the Creta maker sold 47,727 units in the local market.

That’s all from us this week. Watch this space for more. Read more at ndtvprofit.com/auto.