Ola Electric Q2 revenue dips 39% as registrations slide

Ola Electric reported ₹421 crore in revenue for the September quarter, marking a 39% decrease from last year. The company ceased orders from direct-to-consumer stores as it shifts to a dealership model. Ola now has 255 dealer partners with over 300 stores to boost sales and reduce operating costs. Their net loss narrowed to ₹362 crore, despite lower vehicle registrations affecting their business.

Bengaluru: Electric two-wheeler maker Ola Electric reported revenue from operations of ₹421 crore for the September quarter, down 39% from ₹690 crore a year earlier, as vehicle registrations continued to slide.

The company said it has stopped orders from its direct-to-consumer stores on Nov 1, and plans to close them by December. Ola Electric, which had announced a pivot to a dealership model in August, now has 255 dealer partners operating over 300 stores, it said in the shareholder letter.

The Bhavish Aggarwal-led company expects operating expenses to further reduce by ₹50 crore as it shuts down the company store network. In the September quarter, lower operating expenses helped it post a narrower net loss of ₹362 crore from ₹418 crore a year ago.

Operating expense reduced to ₹369 crore in Q2 from ₹472 crore a year ago. This has improved adjusted operating loss before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation to ₹246 crore from ₹258 crore. "After the transition to dealers, we are now running a paid order backlog which we intend to quickly extinguish as we ramp production. The constraint is the ramp-up of our supply chain, not our own manufacturing capacity, as our plant can build well above current output," the company said. It said there is a paid order backlog of about 5,000 vehicles in September, whose deliveries were delayed by a week, pushing them into October.