New Delhi: Ola Electric Mobility Ltd’s revenue from operations crashed 41.5% sequentially to ₹611 crore in the January-March quarter, falling behind its smaller rival Ather Energy Ltd for the first time since the Bhavish Aggarwal-led startup sparked off the electric vehicle wave in the country eight years ago.
Ola Electric’s other income totaled ₹117 crore in January-March, which helped the company end with ₹728 crore revenue in the final quarter of FY25. Ather, which went public earlier this year, had ₹11.7 crore in other income and ₹676.1 crore in revenue from operations in the quarter ended March 2025.
However, Ola’s founder and chief executive Bhavish Aggarwal attributed the decline in revenue to two “one-time” causes—first, an issue with Ola Electric’s buyer registration and delivery process, and secondly, an allocation of ₹250 crore to cater to warranty and repair claims made on the firm’s early generation electric two-wheelers.
Net loss widened to ₹2,276 crore for FY25, driven by slow realization of revenue, long wait periods for product deliveries and warranty costs.
Revenue for FY25 dropped 9.9% to ₹4,514 crore, led largely by Ola Electric’s March quarter revenue dropping by a whopping 41.5%.
“Q4 (of FY25) has been a tough quarter due to lower revenue and a one-time warranty provisioning, but I want to assure everyone that the company’s fundamentals remain focused on our efforts to achieve vertical integration across the system. We’ve already started monetizing our in-house software platform, and while we are one or two quarters behind on our plans to integrate Ola’s own battery cell into our products, they are well on track—we are currently coming close to achieving 80% yield optimization in our commercial EV cells. We’ve also brought down the turnaround time at service centres to an average of 1.1 days, which is industry-leading,” Aggarwal said, in a bid to pacify investors and analysts after grossly missing street expectations.
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The company ended FY25 with a net loss of ₹2,276 crore—up 43% from last year. Net loss increased 54% in the March quarter to ₹870, which Aggarwal attributed to the above factors. The figures, however, come off the back of higher annual two-wheeler sales than FY24—Ola Electric sold nearly 30,000 more scooters last fiscal.
A Bloomberg poll of three analysts projected FY25 revenue of ₹4,760 crore and net loss of ₹1,880 crore for Ola Electric. The company delivered below expectations on both counts.
“The one-time factors led revenue to be what it was for last year and the last quarter. We have now shifted our registration process in-house, which has significantly reduced the time between accepting registrations and selling and invoicing. We’re also taking a company-wide cost reduction project, and in Q1 FY26, we’ll see the impact of that,” Aggarwal said.
Industry stakeholders remained skeptical of Ola Electric’s performance going forward. A senior automotive analyst at a top consultancy firm said on the condition of anonymity that a lack of consistency in delivery and turnaround of products can hurt the company in the long run. “Public or private, it will soon be four years of Ola Electric offering its products to customers. Four years is a good enough period for a company to stabilize its product delivery process for customers. If it is still taking quarterly hits due to inconsistencies in its fundamental operations, questions remain around whether it can truly scale up when demand builds further—a factor that incumbent automotive brands will clearly do much better at. This suggests a limited growth potential for Ola Electric, at least in the near term,” he said.
Aggarwal, meanwhile, focused on his long-term dream of achieving vertical integration of products—a process in which one company controls all aspects of its product, including software and components, alongside the core design. Apple is the biggest example of the success of vertical integration.
“Globally, the only EV companies that make money are Tesla and China’s BYD—and they both follow a strong vertical integration strategy. We (Ola Electric) remain on track to achieve vertical integration in FY26,” Aggarwal said.
Aggarwal also offered guidance for the June quarter’s performance, stating that Ola Electric is aiming for revenue of ₹800-850 crore and gross margin of 28-30%, on sales of 65,000 scooters delivered during the quarter. The company ended FY25 with a gross margin of 20.5%—Aggarwal said that his cost reduction exercise is key to this margin expansion.
Moreover, the company has also reduced its previously stated estimate of the monthly sales run rate it said it will need to achieve profitability. During the Q3 earnings call on 7 February, Aggarwal had stated that the company will need 50,000 sales per month to achieve Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) breakeven.
However, the company has slashed the target to 25,000 now due to the cost reduction efforts.
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