Ola’s CEO Bhavish Aggarwal has faced backlash following a video of the company’s electric scooters catching fire.
This incident took place outside an Ola Electric showroom in Bengaluru’s BTM layout and quickly went viral.
Congress spokesperson Lavanya Ballal Jain shared a video of a scooter being destroyed in fire on X and sarcastically wrote, “Just another fiery day in the life of ola scooter owner.”
Just another fiery day in the life of ola scooter ownerpic.twitter.com/sKADZBZwRB
— Lavanya Ballal Jain (@LavanyaBallal) October 24, 2024
Company Faces Backlash:
The video soon went viral, garnering over 360k views and sparking a wave of brutal internet trolling. In particular, users jokingly associated the incident with the upcoming festival of Diwali.
“Preparing for Diwali Dhamaka?” one of them asked.
“That’s Ola’s corporate diwali party,” another added.
“Ola Electric scooter is the latest firecracker in the market for this Diwali,” a third joked.
The company also faced backlash subpar quality of products, with many highlighting the need for improvement and lack of responsibility.
“Nobody is taking any responsibility. Worst scooter ever in indian market,” a user wrote.
A second user said, “It’s happening in front of the showroom/service centre, but nobody dares extinguish the fire. It’s too scary for Ola bikes.”
Ola Under Fire:
Ola Electrics is already knee-deep in controversy following Bhavish Aggarwal’s online feud with comedian Kunal Kamra, resulting in its stock prices plummeting to unprecedented levels.
The company has also been under fire after multiple complaints about its electric scooters and poor customer service. The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) issued a show cause notice to Ola on 7th October 2024, citing concerns about misleading advertisements, unfair trade practices, and consumer rights violations, and gave the company 15 days to respond.
However, Ola defended itself by stating that 99% of consumer complaints have been resolved.
“We wish to emphasize that out of 10,644 complaints that we received from the CCPA, 99.1% of the complaints were resolved to the complete satisfaction of the customer as per Ola,” they said in response.
Many customers and social media users were unconvinced by this defense.
