Few founders have promised as boldly — or pivoted as often — as Bhavish Aggarwal. From once speaking of selling millions of electric scooters annually to lowering expectations to 15,000 units a month for Ebitda breakeven, the journey of Ola Electric has been marked by sweeping ambition and sharp recalibration.
In the past year alone, Aggarwal has revised plans across key verticals — cell manufacturing, store expansion, revenue guidance and two-wheeler sales. The shifting goalposts have rattled retail investors, triggered analyst downgrades and pushed the stock to record lows. On Wednesday, Ola shares closed at 63% below the IPO price of Rs 76, erasing over Rs 56,000 crore in notional shareholder wealth from their peak levels in August 2024.
The latest reset centres on a strategic shift toward battery energy storage. In his Q3FY26 shareholder letter, Aggarwal described the quarter as a “structural reset”, with a renewed focus on the newly launched battery energy storage system (BESS) business under the “Ola Shakti” brand. He projected a revenue potential of ₹15,000–20,000 crore over the next few years and outlined plans to scale the company’s Gigafactory to 6 GWh of in-house ‘4680 Bharat cells’ capacity by March 2026, up from 2.5 GWh currently.
The announcement marked another turn. Just two quarters earlier, Aggarwal had scaled down cell expansion plans to 5 GWh until FY29 from an earlier 20 GWh target by mid-2026, citing slower EV market evolution. By October 2025, that caution gave way to fresh expansion plans — this time targeting 20 GWh by the second half of FY27 to serve the BESS segment.
Shifting Gears
Ambition, however, has yet to translate into meaningful financial traction. In Q3FY26, Ola reported ₹9 crore in cell-segment revenue against ₹51 crore in operating expenses, even as production volumes doubled quarter-on-quarter. The company is positioning Ola Shakti as a replacement for home inverters — a market long dominated by entrenched players such as Exide Industries, Amara Raja Energy & Mobility and Luminous Power Technologies.
At the same time, the core two-wheeler business has seen its own revisions. In Q3FY25, Aggarwal said Ola needed to sell 50,000 scooters a month to break even. That estimate was halved to 25,000 in Q4FY25 and further reduced to 15,000 units per month in the latest communication — without a clear timeline. Consolidated revenue guidance for FY26 has been cut to ₹3,000–3,200 crore from ₹4,200–4,700 crore earlier, alongside a downward revision in annual sales targets.
Network expansion tells a similar story. In December 2024, Ola unveiled 3,200 outlets in a single day, taking its network to 4,000 stores. The latest update shows the number reduced to 700 as part of cost restructuring — a dramatic rollback that limits cross-selling opportunities for its battery products.
Shriram Subramanian, Founder of proxy advisory firm InGovern Research Services feels the company has not broadly changed its strategy per se. He says even companies like Infosys change strategies according to the external environment, market demand and competitiveness. “As such Ola continues its focus on two-wheelers. They have given the fact the offtake is low but capacity so they have scale down their numbers,” he said.
Credibility Gap
Subramanian, however, added that it is better for public-listed companies like Ola Electric to avoid making bombastic statements without actual plan of action. “They are in a place where they need to get their planning and execution right,” he added.
Brokerages including Citi, Emkay Global and Kotak Securities have downgraded the stock to ‘sell’, with price targets around ₹20. Emkay warned that a turnaround could be “long-drawn”, particularly as incumbents step up and rivals such as Ather Energy scale operations.
While Aggarwal’s supporters argue that course correction is natural in a fast-evolving EV market, critics counter that repeated resets blur strategic clarity. For a listed company, ambition alone is no longer enough; execution and consistency must follow. As Ola Electric toggles between scooters and storage, investors are asking a simple question: is this agility — or drift?