08 Oct 2024
Ola Electric was served a show-cause notice by the Central Consumer Protection Authority on Monday, October 7, for alleged violation of consumer rights, misleading advertisements, and unfair trade practices.
The notice to the electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer comes amid mounting customer complaints about the functioning and service quality of Ola Electric scooters.
“The Central Consumer Protection Authority has provided a timeline of 15 days to the Company to respond to the show cause notice. The Company will respond to the Central Consumer Protection Authority within the given timeframe with the supporting documents,” read a stock exchange filing by Ola Electric CFO Harish Abichandani.
Shares of the Bengaluru-based firm tumbled by 9.1 per cent to Rs 89.14 on Monday, with its market capitalisation falling below $4.75 billion for the first time since Ola’s IPO listing in August.
Ola Electric, which holds over 27 per cent share of the e-scooter market in India, receives over 80,000 customer complaints every month, according to a report by Mint. Recently, CEO Bhavish Aggarwal’s public spat with Indian stand-up comedian Kunal Kamra on X over Ola Electric’s service quality triggered an outpouring of anger and frustration from customers on social media.
In response to Kamra’s photo purportedly showing dozens of discarded e-scooters outside an Ola showroom, Aggarwal asked him to “sit quiet and let us focus on fixing the issues for the real customers. We’re expanding service network fast and backlogs will be cleared soon.”
Meanwhile, HSBC analysts who dropped by multiple Ola service stations said that most of them had “appeared overwhelmed by the service requests and were struggling to provide adequate service quality,” according to a report by Reuters. Last month, a man torched seven e-scooters at an Ola Electric showroom in Karnataka after his complaints about an e- scooter he bought last month were allegedly ignored.
Source: Indian Express