In roughly a decade, Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola has reinvented itself twice — from a ride-hailing insurgent to an electric-scooter disrupter, and now to an aspiring battery and energy-storage player. Each pivot has been framed as strategic foresight. Yet those advantages have proved short-lived when legacy players go full throttle, Ola has tended to cede ground.
It scaled ride-hailing through aggressive discounting before yielding share to Uber as competition intensified, and it briefly led the electric two-wheeler race before TVS , Bajaj and Hero leveraged their distribution depth and service networks to narrow the gap, shifting Ola’s narrative from market dominance to operational stabilization.
Now, as Ola pivots to battery and energy-storage manufacturing, investors fear a repeat of history. Armed with a 20 GWh allocation under the government’s ₹18,100-crore ACC PLI scheme, the company positions itself as an early mover — but the head start looks increasingly fragile as a phalanx of industrial heavyweights assembles at speed.
What are battery leaders doing?
The battery leaders, like Exide and Amara Raja, are commissioning giga factories, while giants such as Reliance Industries — armed with 15 GWh under PLI — are scaling up at Jamnagar. Other domestic giants like Tata, JSW, and Adani are also racing toward initial phases by FY27.
Collectively, around a dozen conglomerates have outlined nearly 300 GWh of capacity by 2030 — ambitions that dwarf Ola’s own roadmap, with Reliance, Adani, and JSW alone targeting 50 GWh each by FY30.
“In cell manufacturing, a head start matters far less than the ability to stabilise production at scale. Yield optimisation, quality consistency and supply-chain integration determine long-term competitiveness.
Strategy employed by legacy players
Legacy players already have technical partnerships with established Chinese and global cell manufacturers, which gives them a faster learning curve and lower execution risk,” Dr. Rahul Walawalkar, Founder and President, Netzero Energy Transition Association.
Ola’s main advantage is its PLI allocation, which could offer a 20% cost edge. However, the company has struggled to capitalise on it, burning cash and accruing ₹12.5 lakh daily in penalties, with dues estimated at ₹50 crore by December 2025.
In a July 2025 analyst call, Aggarwal while announcing scaling down capacity from 20 GWh to 5 GWh by FY29 capped potential PLI penalties at ₹100 crore, raising serious questions about execution and strategic clarity.
“Business decisions must be guided by market dynamics, competition, and technology, not reactive moves into new ventures. With FIIs largely exited, retail investors are left exposed,” says Shriram Subramanian, Founder and MD, InGovern Research Services.
He added that Ola’s board must provide strong, proactive oversight to protect investors from poorly executed strategies.
For investors, this is no longer merely about competition snapping at Ola’s heels; it is about whether the company is spreading itself too thin, chasing multiple finish lines at once.
They say it is Bhavish Aggarwal’s unpredictability that keeps the Street on edge. Even as he pushes Ola Shakti, his battery play, he is already steering toward artificial intelligence. With the launch of Krutrim, Aggarwal has signalled that mobility may not be the endgame at all — just another short-term gig in a longer, shifting playbook.
“The worry on the street is simple: if strategy keeps shifting gears, who is steering the wheel?,” an Subramanian said.
The battery bet increasingly looks less like long-term industrial strategy and more like a hedge against slowing momentum. When Ola Electric went public in 2024, its in-house lithium-ion cell plant was showcased as the crown jewel of vertical integration, with promises of margin gains of up to 30%.
By mid-2025, however, the pitch had shifted. Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) was recast as a standalone growth engine, backed by targets ₹1,000 crore annually by FY27.
The arithmetic, though, is harder to spin. Phase 1 of the 1.5 GWh facility could power roughly 300,000–360,000 two-wheelers — broadly matching Ola’s 2024 run rate. Phase 2, at 5 GWh, was meant to underwrite future expansion into motorcycles and three-wheelers and nudge the business toward profitability.
Instead, with monthly sales sliding below 10,000 units in 2025, the company seems to have pivoted to BESS, skirting the uncomfortable question of how it would sweat its assets in a business where idle capacity quickly turns toxic.
An expert said the rational move would have been for Ola to sell its Bharat 4680 cells to other OEMs. However, in its Q1 FY26 earnings call, Bhavish Aggarwal admitted the company isn’t currently targeting external customers, focusing instead on R&D-stage applications for home and grid storage.
The expert added that Aggarwal chose to divert capacity to grid applications because the market isn’t ready to bet on untested cells in a high-voltage game.
A competitor echoed this view, telling FE: “No major OEM will touch Ola’s cells, they’re unproven. India’s lenient testing standards make OEMs wary of gambling on substandard products.”
Another CEO of a leading Ola 2W rival cautioned: “Ola’s two-wheelers have generated over 10,000 complaints from quality issues and breakdowns. While most didn’t make headlines, in this case, each incident would, and any fire would damage the OEM’s reputation and put lives at risk.”
A query sent to Ola remained answered till press time.