Now Reading: Ola Electric pivots to dealers, gets 1,000 enquiries
-
01
Ola Electric pivots to dealers, gets 1,000 enquiries
Ola Electric is shifting to a dealer-led retail model after months of declining sales, receiving interest from nearly 1,000 prospective dealers. Chairman Bhavish Aggarwal said the company realised that local dealers can…
The Story in Brief
Ola Electric is shifting to a dealer-led retail model after months of declining sales, receiving interest from nearly 1,000 prospective dealers. Chairman Bhavish Aggarwal said the company realised that local dealers can handle customer engagement and servicing more effectively at scale, so company-owned stores will now function as experience centres. The move comes as Ola’s monthly dispatches fell by double digits each month from February to July 2026, including a 54% drop in February and 57% in March, even as the overall electric two-wheeler industry grew 11.2% in July.
Aggarwal added that most service challenges are now behind the company, with spare parts availability being the main issue rather than demand. The company aims to cut operating expenses to Rs 300-325 crore per quarter and is targeting service revenue of Rs 400-500 crore by FY28 from its installed base of over one million vehicles. In the first quarter of FY27, Ola delivered around 39,200 units, nearly double the previous quarter, and its market share rose from 5.1% to 8.4%. Capital expenditure for this fiscal year, excluding the cell project, is estimated at Rs 30-50 crore.
The Indian Opinion
The narrative around Ola Electric has swung wildly from disruptor to distressed, but the dealer pivot is less a surrender than a belated admission that two-wheeler retail in India runs on touch, trust, and a mechanic nearby. The hype about direct-to-consumer skipping the middleman ignored the reality: service bottlenecks and spare-parts delays blunted word-of-mouth. Nearly 1,000 dealer enquiries suggest the ecosystem still sees value in Ola’s brand. The real test is not the number of outlets, but whether the cost reset, Rs 300-325 crore quarterly OpEx, and local battery production can deliver a product that does not require a service visit every month. Deliveries doubling quarter-on-quarter are promising, but a 46% sequential sales drop last year shows how fragile momentum is. One quarter of stability does not make a turnaround.
Source: auto.economictimes.indiatimes.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
