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Ola has reassessed its priorities and decided to shut down Ola Dash — its quick commerce business and used-cars retail Ola Cars. Ola said it will be reorienting its Ola Cars business to focus more on strengthening go to market strategy for Ola Electric.
Ola Cars’ infra, technology and capabilities will be repurposed towards growing Ola Electric’s sales and service network. Ola will also be increasing its pace of investments and growth into new areas like electric cars, cell manufacturing and financial services.
High targets
Ola Electric is said to have surpassed ₹500 crore revenue in the first two months of FY22-23 and is on track to surpass the $1 billion run rate by end of this year. Ola will also be expanding its two-wheeler portfolio with plans to launch its second EV scooter aimed at the mass market, to be introduced before the end of this year.
Ola has now set a strategic focus to accelerate its electrification journey and build on its core capabilities in mobility services and financial services. The company’s ride-hailing business is said to be delivering its highest ever GMV month-on-month along with strong profitability.
“Ola continues to stay focused on its mission to accelerate the electric revolution in India and scale its mobility services to serve 500 million Indians,” the company said in a statement.
Operations shut
In May, BusinessLine reported that Ola Cars was shutting down operations in five locations — Nagpur, Visakhapatnam, Ludhiana, Patna and Guwahati.
Ola Cars was launched in October 2021 with 30 cities and it planned to scale to over 100 cities by 2022. However, the number of operational cities has been gradually decreasing. Chief Executive Officer of Ola Cars, Arun Sirdeshmukh, also exited the company in May 2022.
In January, Ola had announced plans to expand its quick commerce service, Ola Dash, by building a network of 500 dark stores spread across 20 cities in the next six months. However, in April, the company was reported to have heavily restructured the business and fired about 2,100 contract workers.
EV fire incidents
Ola Electric had to recall 1,441 units of its electric two-wheelers in the wake of an incident of a vehicle catching fire. It said, “These scooters will be inspected by our service engineers and will go through a thorough diagnostics across all battery systems, thermal systems as well as safety systems.”
The company is also doing its R&D on developing an electric car by the end of 2023 or early 2024. Founder Bhavish Aggarwalhad earlier said Ola’s car to be exported outside India, needs autonomous capabilities. Otherwise, it won’t be competitive in the market. He added that the company’s vision is to build electric vehicles for the masses.
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