Seeing a host of things happening at Ola, some seem good to get them back to track, some showcasing recurring problems and some still grey...

Seeing a host of things happening at Ola, some seem good to get them back to track, some showcasing recurring problems and some still grey...

👉 Getting them back on track: -

Firstly squarely focusing on domestic market and winding up international markets business (UK, Australia and New Zealand) seems a much needed step. Hemant Bakshi mentions they have re-assessed the priorities is a great step as every market is different and there is no point in making losses jump (subsidizing those from certain profitable markets would have been understandable but even that is not the case)

Secondly doing the competition check and being competitive with the likes of Namma Yatri by making auto-rides on subscription system might not help in the bottom-line for now but would surely keep them relevant for their future launches of Raahi electric autorickshaws

👉 Recurring problems not being solved: -

First being "No AC" campaigns have picked up momentum and the likes of Ola, Uber, and Rapido are alleged to threaten drivers by permanently blocking their IDs on the app and not assigning them airport or inter-city rides. I remember years back, when I was interviewing for Zomato and referred to delivery people as agents, they corrected me by saying they are delivery partners. Here also these are driver partners and ought to be heard and respected.

Second being "No service/only sales" approach taken in Ola Electric. Multiple customer testimonials across public domain highlight issues in vehicle not working and couple of incident with vehicle fires. While Ather Energy did the root cause analysis when they faced similar concerns, Ola, simply said fire happened due to aftermarket parts being installed. Even if what they mention is true, in today's connected vehicle telematics ecosystem it is easily detectable which part has been replaced and what are the details - which would bring in more credibility

👉 The grey area....

Recent announcement of Ola Krutrim team being "obsessed" with building their own cloud infra and skipping the likes of AWS and Azure - how does this help and what is the potential tangible mid term impact?