Invest on product and supply chain, less on ‘cute ads’: Ola's Bhavish Aggarwal on EV sales slowdown

Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO of India's largest EV scooter manufacturer tells other EV makers to spend less on marketing as EV sales slow down.

Invest more on the product and its supply chain and lesser on its marketing is Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal’s message to India’s electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers, who he feels are struggling with stagnant sales and are therefore spending too much money in making “cute” ads to potentially bring in more customers.

Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal (X/Sadhguru Academy)

What has been the problem with India's EV twho-wheeler market?

India’s EV two-wheeler market has seen slowing sales over the last three months, with registrations falling by 27% in May compared to the previous year, according to a Mint report.

“Electric vehicles is a supply chain and manufacturing business,” he wrote on a post on X (Formerly Twitter). “Save the marketing and sales ₹ ₹ and invest it into supply chains and tech to lower your product costs,” he added.

This comes after Zerodha’s co-founder Nikhil Kamath, who is also an investor in EV scooter manufacturer Ather Energy, took a light-hearted dig at the Ola competitor on both Instagram and X last week.

“Every one of us has pluses and minuses, Ather has sh*t marketing but great product (sorry Tarun). PS: I bought this scooter at MRP, Tarun (Mehta) didn't even give me a discount,” Kamath jokingly wrote.

Ather’s CEO Tarun Mehta Tarun Mehta responded in an equally humorous way with a post on X, with the famous meme featuring Pakistani cricket fan Sarim Akhtar.

“Marketing team be like ‘isko discount hi de dena chahiye tha (we should've given him a discount)'," he wrote.

Ola Electric is currently India’s largest maker of EV two-wheelers with a market share of 42.3%, according to the Mint report which added that TVS Motor Co had a market share of 17.5%, Bajaj Auto had a share of 15.2%, and Ather had a share of 10.4%.