[MinivanDriver]

I see that several folks here are comparing OLA with Tesla. There is prima facie nothing wrong with that. However here are few points to ponder in my opinion. Tesla’s strategy was always a high risk high reward one. It became successful due to the great engineering prowess, vision, exceptional courage, grit, commitment and hard work of Elon. Even with all that, it would have failed if not for his charisma that led a lot of people to stick with him. Does Bhavish have all that qualities to pull it through? When losses were accumulating and investor confidence was tanking, Elon went for all or bust putting in his own money to keep Tesla afloat. Does Bhavish have the same deep pockets and more importantly the commitment to do something similar? Or will he cut his losses and abandon ship? I guess only time will tell. As an auto and environmental enthusiast and an engineer, I wish he would succeed though.

[VW2010]

In this troll generation this appears to be a normal incident and look at the media attraction one small post is gathering. As they say there is no bad marketing, this may be a planned stunt, paid and well executed which otherwise everyone would have ignored. WhatsApp stories and social media based incidents are something that will start to die when people get bored with manipulation. It may take few years but I won't be surprised when this whole notion of I will complain in social media will be trolled soon as well. I am one of them who believes or who have started to ignore the noise in electronic texts and who also believe even big companies will stop worrying about being bullied in social media and the reliability of every such posts will only keep going down. We are at a point where social media is a ransom for anything that happens in real world and so far many companies have fallen for it. Like complain about someone delivering a car but forgot to say thanks, and that delivery guy getting trolled in various forums as arm chair critiquing is easy. May be a bad example,but you get a gist. This social media wave is also a wave that shall pass.

[landcruiser123]

This trend of using twitter to gain publicity is here to stay. Any publicity is good publicity.

Ultimately these CEOs (even Musk) are burning investor capital and milking government benefits. If things go south(which might in some cases), the CEOs just get the golden parachute, jump off the burning plane, and land straight onto their dream island or the boardroom of their next venture.

[Asif 6959]

That's the difference between a valuation company and a company with an actual turnover.

Easy to sound cocky when you got no ride!!!

[clementw]

Looking like Ola wants to divert attention away from their cash burn. Never could understand the logic of people pouring money into unprofitable companies who promised the pot of gold over the rainbow. Once they missed the rainbow they did something called a pivot and jumped elsewhere. Never understood the shift from a ride aggregator to a vehicle manufacturer and instead of looking at electric cabs that would have appeared like control on the environment they went to scooters.
Time will tell how many burned their money and whether the burnol helped.

[SnS_12]

Not so long ago a company with a $1 billion valuation would have been expected to earn at least $100 million annually, but now the current valuation is based on the basis what the company will be worth in the future. Once the investors feel they want to cash in on their investment they either look for a new buyer or go the IPO route.

In all probability this BURNOL would have been provided by the current investors to Bhavish who's company at the moment is just burning its cash at a crazy pace...

[binoybnair]

The challenges for Ola appear to be mainly supply chain related, which they seem to have not been able to sort out yet. It must also be noted that despite the massive demand, none of the established OEMs like TVS (with its iQube) or Bajaj (with its Chetak) seem to be in a hurry to sell their electric two-wheelers. I guess (and its just a guess) that they too have not been able to get the supply chain sorted out, either.

[aniketi]

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

I don't understand why these popular figures cannot be more civil and polite in their social media interactions. These are public figures followed by thousands if not millions of people, and we wonder why social media has become so toxic. Bare minimum courtesy and respect seems to be a thing of the past.

Any publicity is good publicity !! Unfortunately it works that way only, it happens in Bollywood, Politics, etc. If you say something normal, you won't get any attention. Say something controversial, you will get immediate publicity, people starts discussing on it. Just like this thread, isn't it?

[Electromotive]

Can we please stop attributing all of Tesla's success to Elon Musk? Pretty please?

Mr. Musk is a smart man and a visionary, no doubt about that, but an organization like Tesla or SpaceX is like a machine and for the machine to function well, all of its parts must function well and in sync. Every time we put Musk on a pedestal we are doing a disservice to the hundreds of very smart, competent and passionate engineers and managers what made Musk's vision possible. Having a technically trained individual with good taste as the CEO helps but you need people to challenge you, say no, evolve the ideas and execute the vision. Then there is the money management side - an even bigger regulatory hurdle for a listed company that just a couple years ago was on the verge of collapse and burning through cash. Tesla is a pyramid of very talented and passionate people with Musk as the face of the brand, let's not forget that and let's not make gods out of men.

[Strider24]

In the matured two wheeler industry dominated by players like Hero, Bajaj etc., the only way to make wave and get noticed is to ruffle some feathers of big ones. specially the naysayer & skeptical people.

Ola indeed has made a huge jump & some form of failure is bound to happen specially when OLA is trying to achieve the scale of operation in short time which Hero and Bajaj cant dream of at this moment. they are stuck with their traditional ICE focused factory setup and cant even meet the demand of their own EV products right now.

Years ago, when Uber & OLA came to existence, the traditional cab & autorickshaw owners reacted the same way.

[amit1agrawal]

If the Ola electric car was to be kept a secret (don't think anything other than computer generated 3D model is ready), why did Bhavish tweet about it? I think It's because Ola IPO is coming in the next few months & he wants to generate hype about Ola to fetch a real good value for IPO. He is simply serving his investors; the VCs who invested in Ola early on and now looking to exit via IPO & make a handsome profit.

https://inc42.com/buzz/exclusive-ipo...antii-capital/

[haskelerator]

All guys hero worshiping Elon Musk do read this https://futurism.com/the-byte/engine...lon-musk-apart. Is this because Elon is “faareigner” while Bhavish is Indian. And don’t get me started on those auto journalists who don’t even bother with highlighting the safety ratings of the Seltos and Sonet. Let their products speak. If he dishes it out he better answer for his hypocrisy too.

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[GrammarNazi]

Many unbiased people who've been in this industry since decades don't show such contempt for how the future will play out, and many of us closely follow quite some ingeniously insightful people within the industry. (& I'm NOT talking about journos!)

Really wonder how people like Bhavish keep getting funding without mature control over their outlook & temperament. We all know that in the Indian market EV bikes are NOT going to be a complete replacement atleast till he retires. I guess in his mind, hes' idolising Elon Musk & his response somewhat sounds to himself like a EV v/s petrol "battle".

And IMO this is not limited to Ola alone, there are a few of startup founders who behave very erratically - some people who come to mind are PayTMs Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Rahul Yadav (Housing dot com), Ashneer Grover, etc

While they'd have gotten a few things right, its important they learn from hundreds of other founders who don't take their success for granted.

Reminds me of this one WhatsApp forward I came across (reduce volume to 50%) :

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3wwZ5_caRzw&feature=share

[Atul Kolekar]

Both Parties have crossed their lines in this instance but I think the Original tweet had committed no foul in my humble opinion. Tweeting a Render teasing about an unreleased product and being trolled about existing product is unwarranted, specifically the language used and hostility. Its like neighborhood aunties complaining to your mother about your sibling and marking you down just because...

[MaheshY1]

First, manufacturing and product management are run by 2 SEPARATE teams. You CAN work on both simultaneously. And asking the product team to sort out manufacturing issues is like asking a fish to climb a tree. Even a mid-level auto journo should understand this.

Second, Bhavish has understood that the automakers and the media are against him for XYZ reason. And it's apparent in their attacks on Ola. So, he's no longer paying attention to them and it looks like he's not going to pander to their fancies. His product will speak for itself.

The Ola scooter pricing is good.
The range is good.
The performance is good.
The features are good.
The design is good.

Ola have too many aces with their first scooter. Many established automakers have failed to get even features, design, and pricing right with a lot of their products.

Tesla had their share of naysayers in their early days. And a lot of short-sellers too who have at least seen bankruptcy up close, if not experienced it first hand.

I'm no fan of Ola. But they have a fantastic product with them, which I'm more than happy to recommend to people in my circle. The wait is more than worth it. Even some initial batch production and QC niggles are worth it as the warranty will cover them. The Indian auto community is probably too afraid to suffer what Tesla made luxury car makers go through.