‘ }
CompaniesAyaan Kartik
5 min
read
26 Mar 2025, 11:44 AM
ISTBhavish Aggarwal, chairman and CEO of Ola Electric Mobility, has repeatedly emphasized the need to hit 50,000 monthly sales to break even. (File Photo: Bloomberg)SummaryA bid to slash registration costs led to a standoff with vendors, stalled deliveries, and a ₹3,000 crore market rout—raising fresh concerns over the EV maker’s strategy.
Last month, buyers eagerly awaiting their Ola Electric scooters began noticing an unexpected delay. Instead of the usual one-week turnaround, deliveries stretched to nearly a month. Store managers had few answers, and complaints started piling up on social media.
At the heart of the disruption was a standoff between Ola Electric and its registration agencies over fees. The dispute stalled scooter deliveries, left customers frustrated, and wiped out nearly ₹3,000 crore in investor wealth. The fallout has also drawn government scrutiny.
Read this | Ola Electric’s scooter deliveries hit as it renegotiates contracts with vehicle registration agencies to cut costs
The controversy has already claimed a top executive—General Legal Counsel Rohit Kumar—who left the company amid tensions over how the situation was handled, according to two industry executives.
This marks one of the biggest challenges for Ola Electric Mobility Ltd since its stock market debut in August 2024.
Mint pieces together the story of the entire dispute with the registration agencies after speaking to seven executives aware of the developments.What led to this?The trouble started with a dispute between Ola Electric and two of India’s largest vehicle registration agencies—Rosmerta Digital Services Ltd and Shimnit India Pvt. Ltd.
The agencies had been working with Ola since December 2021, processing vehicle registrations by entering customer details into the government’s database and printing number plates.
For nearly two years, the arrangement worked smoothly. But by mid-2024, Ola Electric’s sales started slipping. While the company hit a peak of 50,000 units in March last year, it never reached that milestone again.
According to people familiar with the matter, Ola Electric was paying ₹1,400-1,600 per vehicle for registration—a rate set based on expected sales volume.
As part of a broader cost-cutting drive launched in November 2024, Ola pushed for steep discounts, but the agencies resisted, arguing that lower sales volumes meant higher per-unit costs for them.
By February, talks had turned into an outright standoff.
“One day the company comes and asks for a cost which we did not agree with which resulted in the work being stopped immediately. There was no negotiation involved,” one of the executives said on the condition of anonymity.
Another executive said Ola sought a price cut of nearly 67%, a demand the agencies found untenable.
Unlik