Ola Electric's Bhabish Agarwal and his EVs need to be less flammable people

Ola's CEO chose to respond. After all, the comedian revealed one of Agarwal's posts above that showed a photo of the automaker's gleaming Giga factory for cell production, the EV maker's pride and joy. Financing its expansion was a goal of the company's successful $733 million initial public offering in August. So, on October 6th, Agarwal went to X:

“Since you care so much @kunalkamra88, come help us! I'll even pay you more for these paid tweets or more than you make from your failed comedy career. Otherwise, relax and focus on solving real customer problems. We are rapidly expanding the service network and the delays will be resolved soon.”

It reveals Musk's playbook, if not the level of insults, or the Tesla Inc. chief's online spat with British divers who helped rescue schoolchildren trapped in a Thai cave in 2018. Musk sent engineers and a ship to help in the effort, but after Vernon Unsworth rejected the offer as a “PR stunt” and suggested in a CNN interview that the billionaire was “sticking his sub where it hurts,” Musk called him a “pedophile.” face.” called out “on Twitter. Unsworth sued for libel but lost. Musk testified that his comments were insulting; in fact, he did not accuse Unsworth of being a pedophile.

High-level corporate leaders have public roles and responsibilities. They are not free to speak their minds like the rest of us. The advice that a major Tesla shareholder gave to Musk during the Thai cave rescue episode also applies to Agarwal: “If something really bothers you, take a walk around the factory… buy an ice cream cone. Just don’t use Twitter.”

Instead, Agarwal doubled down, sharpening his attack in subsequent posts that called on the comedian to “acquire some real skills for change.” A job at an Ola service center “will pay better than your failure,” he said.

The comedian won the court of public opinion. Aside from some voices of solidarity with the CEO, the audience responses at Slogfest came mainly from people who didn't like his arrogant tone. Many shared their own frustrations – or those of other customers – with Ola's product quality and service speed.

I have a lot of patience with startups that are widely seen as representing the revitalization of India's stagnant industrial ambitions. Given the country's dismal record on women's participation in the workforce, Ola's women-led electric vehicle factory is a significant initiative.

As I've written before, the SoftBank Group Corp-backed electric vehicle maker is also a test case for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's industrial policy push. His government offered Agarwal not one but two sets of production-related incentives. For the first time in two decades, a major Indian car manufacturer debuted on the stock market.

Being important, however, is no excuse for bad behavior. or a license to sell a product that many consumers believe to be defective.

According to Mint newspaper, Ola handles 80,000 customer complaints every month. Amid declining sales volumes, the Indian government has ordered an audit to check whether the automaker is maintaining its service centers and honoring customer warranties, Reuters reported. I asked the corporate communications team if the reports were accurate. I never got a response. In an October 7 announcement to the stock exchange, Ola said it had received a show cause notice from the Central Consumer Protection Authority. Ola shares fell to Rs 90 from Rs 146 post-IPO. Agarwal has a lot of real-world problems. So why is he tilting at social media windmills and ruining everything?

Even after hitting Kamra, it was still possible for Agarwal to control the damage by borrowing a leaf from JDRT's mask strategy, as his legal team once described in court. The clumsy acronym stands for “mocking, deleting, apologetic and reactionary tweet.”

When I checked last Friday, the Indian billionaire had neither deleted his posts nor apologized for them. This is a mistake. “Olan Mask”, as Kamra Aggarwal came to be called, needs a longer fuse. He also needs to understand that “serving the country” – a lesson he says he learned from his supporter Ratan Tata, the Indian business titan who died last week – takes many forms.