Ola Electric defers e-scooter sale to Sept 15 due to website glitch
Ola Electric’s technology team is working hard to iron out the technical kinks that marred the electric vehicle company’s hyped online sale of its electric scooters (e-scooters) — the S1 and the S1 Pro — on Wednesday, said company sources. The Softbank-backed firm is facing technical difficulties in making the website live for the purchase of its e-scooters.
Ola’s fully online sales and service model is a first in the Indian automotive industry. Tesla has successfully executed this model globally for sales, but not service. EVS typically require much lesser servicing. Hence, the online/hybrid service model has the potential to be successful, wrote Kapil Singh, analyst from Nomura in a note.
However, this would still require robust sales and service support systems from the company. If the online model is well executed, the firm can quickly reach the major cities in India, leapfrogging the time it would take to set up dealerships.
E-scooter start-up Ather Energy entered the market with the “experience centers” and continues to expand them.
According to company sources, the website couldn’t go live as there were integration issues. The firm has built a complete digital purchase journey, including a fully digital loan process that does not require any paperwork.
Ola had planned the sale from 6 pm on September 8. This was part of its plan to skip the physical store model and go completely digital. However, the company was not successful in providing this first-of-itskind digital purchase journey as the sale window did not open and people had to wait for hours. A lot of customers vented their frustration on social media platforms for not being able to buy the product.
“Our team is working on fixing the website and making sure it doesn’t happen again,” said a company source, adding, “We will now be starting our purchase on September 15 at 8 am and are making this platform capable of handling huge traffic.” Company sources said the firm is reaching out to customers and keeping them informed about their reservations via SMS, email, and push notification. Their reservation and position in the purchase queue remain unchanged. So, the customers that reserved it first will get it first. The delivery dates also remain unchanged.
“I want to apologise to all of you who had to wait for several hours. The website was just not up to expectations on quality. I know we disappointed you and I sincerely apologise to each one of you for what was clearly a very frustrating experience," Bhavesh Aggarwal, co-chairman and group chief executive officer, Ola, tweeted.
A spokesperson for Ola on Thursday said the firm has apologised to those consumers who have reserved its escooter. “We faced technical difficulties in making our website for purchases live and we decided to postpone go-live with our purchase website on September 15 at 8 am,” said the spokesperson for the company.
Last month, Ola Electric took the wraps off its maiden escooter offerings, the S1 and S1 Pro, for a commercial launch on Sunday. With prices starting from ~99,999 (excluding state government incentives, registration fee, and insurance cost), Aggarwal had said the e-scooters are designed and engineered in India for the world and will deliver the best scooter experience to the consumer.
I want to apologise to all of you who had to wait for several hours. The website was just not up to expectations on quality. I know we disappointed you and I sincerely apologise to each one of you for what was clearly a very frustrating experience" BHAVESH AGGARWAL Co-chairman & group CEO, Ola