In October 2024, Ola Electric had a service problem it could not tweet away. More than 10,000 customers had complained. The consumer regulator sent a show-cause notice. The founder, Bhavish Aggarwal, had a choice: fix the queue or fight a comedian online. He chose the comedian. Fifteen months later the market leader was down to around 6% market share. This is what happens when a CEO answers a service crisis with a clapback.
Ola Electric market share: leader to also-ran
Share of India’s electric two-wheeler market, %
Registration-based share, as reported. Sources: Business Standard, Inc42 (2025-26).
What actually happened with Ola Electric’s complaints?
Start with the numbers, because they are not in dispute.
On 7 October 2024, the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) sent Ola Electric a show-cause notice. It flagged misleading advertising, unfair trade practices and consumer-rights violations. The regulator gave the company 15 days to respond.
The trigger was volume. The CCPA later detailed 9,948 grievances logged at the National Consumer Helpline between September 2023 and August 2024. Of those, 3,389 were about service delays, 1,899 about late delivery of new scooters, and 1,459 about services that were promised and never delivered.
Ola Electric’s own count was higher. On 21 October 2024, the company said it had received 10,644 complaints from the CCPA and had resolved 99.1% of them. Both things can be true: a big backlog, and a company insisting it was already fixed.
When 10,000 customers are angry, a CEO has two jobs: fix the service and say nothing. Bhavish Aggarwal did the opposite.
What did Bhavish Aggarwal do about it?
He tweeted.
Days before the notice, the comedian Kunal Kamra posted a photo of Ola scooters sitting idle at a service centre and asked what Ola planned to do about its after-sales mess. It was a fair question. Thousands of owners were asking it too.
Aggarwal’s reply set the tone. “Since you care so much, @kunalKamra88, come and help us out! I’ll even pay more than you earned for this paid tweet or from your failed comedy career. Or else sit quiet and let us focus on fixing the issues for the real customers,” he wrote.
That is the whole problem in one post. A founder facing a documented service crisis called the criticism paid, mocked the critic’s career, and told him to be quiet. The story stopped being about broken scooters. It became about the tone.
Why a clapback is the worst possible move here
A viral reply feels like winning. It is not. It hands every angry customer a screenshot and a reason to pile on. The spat ran for weeks. Kamra kept posting. “Service station dikhao,” he wrote after Aggarwal shared a Diwali celebration video. Each round kept the service failure in the headlines, which is the one place a struggling brand cannot afford to be.
When the CCPA notice landed, Ola Electric’s stock fell. The market was not reading the tweets. It was reading the risk.
The Playbook
A viral clapback buys one day of applause and a year of screenshots. The service queue is the brand. Ola Electric answered a documented backlog with a fight, and the fight became the story.
Did the tweeting fix the service problem?
No. And the numbers since are brutal.
Ola Electric was the clear leader of India’s electric two-wheeler market in 2024, with more than 35% share. By January 2026 that share had fallen below 6.3%. In the first 18 days of February 2026 it slipped again to around 4.2%. The company that defined the category now trails TVS, Bajaj, Hero and Ather.
The sales tell the same story. In the quarter ending December 2025, Ola Electric sold 32,680 scooters, down 61% year on year. Revenue fell 55% to about Rs 470 crore.
The service network, the actual fix, barely moved. Company data showed 452 co-located service centres in February 2025, up from 429 at the time of its IPO. That is 23 new centres for a national backlog. By early 2026 the company was cutting its store count to around 550 and restructuring.
The lesson every founder should take from this
Your service queue is your brand. Not your keynote, not your follower count, not your comeback tweet. When customers are angry at scale, they are telling you the product promise broke. The only reply that works is a fixed problem.
Aggarwal had a rare asset: a first-mover lead and a category named after his product. He spent his attention on the fight instead of the fix. The lead is gone. The complaints were the warning. The tweets were the tell.
Contrast it with the brands that grew quietly. Look at how Rapido out-positioned Ola and Uber by nailing one promise and repeating it, or how Zepto’s valuation ran ahead of its unit economics. The winners obsess over the boring part. Ola Electric performed instead.
FAQ
How many complaints did Ola Electric receive?
Ola Electric said it received 10,644 complaints from the CCPA in October 2024 and claimed 99.1% were resolved. The CCPA separately cited 9,948 grievances at the National Consumer Helpline over the prior year.
Why did the CCPA send Ola Electric a notice?
The CCPA issued a show-cause notice on 7 October 2024 over alleged misleading advertising, unfair trade practices and consumer-rights violations, after complaints about service delays, late deliveries and unfulfilled service promises.
What did Bhavish Aggarwal say to Kunal Kamra?
Aggarwal called Kamra’s criticism a “paid tweet”, referenced his “failed comedy career”, and told him to “sit quiet” so the company could focus on “the real customers”. The public exchange ran for weeks.
What is Ola Electric’s market share now?
Its share of India’s electric two-wheeler market fell from over 35% in 2024 to about 6.3% in January 2026, and roughly 4.2% by mid-February 2026, based on reported registration data.
Did Ola Electric fix its service problem?
The service network grew only slightly through early 2025, and sales fell 61% year on year in the quarter ending December 2025. The complaint crisis was not resolved by the public response.
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This article is analysis and fair comment based on publicly reported information from the sources cited. Figures are as reported by those outlets on the dates noted. Named individuals and companies are discussed in the context of public events and reporting.
Sources: Bhavish Aggarwal’s reply to Kunal Kamra: Business Today (7 Oct 2024). CCPA notice and stock reaction: Business Standard (8 Oct 2024). 10,644 complaints, 99.1% resolved: Business Standard (21 Oct 2024). 9,948 NCH grievances detail: Business Today (5 Dec 2024). 2025-26 sales, share and store cuts: Inc42 and Business Standard.
