In his Might 20 letter to shareholders, Bhavish Aggarwal, Chairman and Managing Director of Ola Electric Mobility Ltd, made an implicit cut price: decide Ola Electric much less by the gap burned in its stability sheet and extra by the factories, know-how and battery platform that shareholder capital has helped create.
“FY26 was a yr of reset for Ola Electric,” Aggarwal wrote. “We used the yr to strengthen the fundamentals of the enterprise—service, product high quality, gross margins, working prices, money self-discipline, gross sales productiveness and cell manufacturing.”
The message is evident. Aggarwal is asking shareholders to look previous a bruising yr in scooters and focus as a substitute on what he believes is the firm’s extra enduring asset: a vertically built-in battery and power platform that might ultimately matter greater than the autos that financed it.
Whether or not that wager justifies the ache endured by clients and traders stays to be seen. However Aggawal desires traders to bear in mind FY26 as the much less as the yr Ola Electric misplaced its lead in electrical scooters and extra as the yr it laid the industrial foundations for a enterprise far bigger than scooters.
An apology that by no means got here
Aggarwal stops wanting providing a direct apology to clients or shareholders. As a substitute, he acknowledges that service had turn out to be “the largest constraint on demand and model belief,” a concise admission of the operational failures that damage each buyer confidence and the firm’s market place.
FY26 was the yr clients and traders bore the value of these execution lapses. Gross sales fell sharply, market share slipped and hundreds of householders grappled with service delays and high quality points that dented confidence in one in every of India’s most high-profile EV manufacturers.
Aggarwal’s argument is that these setbacks must be considered not merely as operational errors, however as the building value of a a lot bigger power enterprise.
That understated phrase captures the coronary heart of Ola’s drawback. Service delays stretched to round 9 days in October 2025, and backlogs reached 14 days earlier than bettering to almost sooner or later by March 2026. For hundreds of shoppers, these delays turned what was marketed as a technology-led mobility revolution right into a irritating possession expertise.
The monetary toll was equally revealing. Guarantee prices fell to ₹59 crore in FY26 from ₹555 crore in FY25. A part of that decline displays decrease gross sales, however the discount was far steeper than the 43.5 per cent drop in deliveries to 173,794 items from 307,846 items. Had Ola incurred guarantee prices at the similar per-vehicle price as FY25, the FY26 guarantee invoice would have been roughly ₹313 crore relatively than ₹59 crore, indicating a considerable enchancment in product high quality and restore effectivity. Proof that the reset is working.
Aggarwal argues that This fall FY26 confirmed “the reset working”
The numbers help a lot of that declare. This fall FY26 was the firm’s first working cash-flow constructive quarter, with consolidated money move from operations of ₹91 crore. Gross margin rose to 38.5 per cent from 13.7 per cent a yr earlier, whereas consolidated working bills, together with lease leases, almost halved to ₹428 crore from ₹844 crore.
Even so, the scale of the setback stays important. Deliveries fell 43.5 per cent in FY26, and consolidated income from operations dropped 50.1 per cent to ₹2,253 crore from ₹4,514 crore. The corporate’s objective of rebuilding nationwide market share to 15–20 per cent over the subsequent six months suggests how a lot floor was ceded to TVS Motor, Bajaj Auto and Ather Power.
The true pitch: batteries, not scooters
The strongest a part of Aggarwal’s letter lies in batteries. “Ola was constructed for this second,” he wrote, arguing that the firm is uniquely positioned throughout “the two most essential pillars of India’s power future, electrical mobility and batteries.”
The corporate has mentioned its Gigafactory already has 2.5 GWh of operational capability, with set up for a 6 GWh business ramp largely full and anticipated to be absolutely commercialised by the finish of the present quarter.
“That is not a conceptual mission however an working manufacturing platform operating at commercially viable yields” the firm mentioned in its investor presentation.
In accordance to the firm administration the sleeper element in the presentation is Ola’s declare to have commercialised dry-electrode manufacturing know-how, which may scale back capital expenditure by 33 per cent, decrease power consumption by 40–60 per cent and shrink manufacturing facility footprint by 70 per cent in contrast with standard processes.
About 15 per cent of present automobile orders already use Ola-made cells, and the firm expects its whole product portfolio to transition to in-house batteries by September 2026. Past autos, Ola has launched Shakti, a distributed energy-storage product with greater than 50,000 leads and over 200 distributor companions, and is growing Mahashakti, a utility-scale storage system focused for launch in calendar yr 2027.
Citing Avendus Analysis, Ola estimates India’s battery market may attain 420 GWh yearly by 2035, representing a roughly $30 billion alternative.
Ola plans to develop its battery capability from 6 GWh to 20 GWh by means of a capital elevate at the cell subsidiary stage, a transfer that means the battery enterprise may ultimately entice standalone funding—and maybe a valuation separate from the loss-making automobile enterprise.
For traders who backed the grand promise Bhavish Aggarwal made earlier than Ola Electric went public, the newest shareholder letter provides a easy proposition: decide the firm not by the turbulence in scooters, however by the battery platform taking form beneath it.
The scooters examined the persistence of shoppers and scorched investor confidence. Aggarwal is now asking shareholders to place yet one more wager—that the Gigafactory, not the scooters, will in the end ship the payoff.
Revealed on Might 21, 2026
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