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Ola Electric and TVS Motor: A Tale of Two Eras of Growing Pains and Maturity
If you’ve been tracking India’s auto industry closely, you’ll notice something striking about the noise surrounding Ola Electric today. Every week, there’s a video on social media showing angry customers outside a service center, complaints about delayed repairs, or discussions about scooter breakdowns. Twitter threads and YouTube reviewers have turned Ola’s service challenges into a daily headline.
But if you rewind the clock 20 years, back to the early 2000s, a similar story was unfolding quietly — only without hashtags and camera phones. The company in the hot seat back then wasn’t a new-age EV startup. It was TVS Motor Company, one of India’s most respected auto manufacturers today.
Yes, the same TVS that now enjoys a spotless reputation for reliability and after-sales service was once the target of endless customer frustration. The only difference? There was no social media back then to amplify the outrage.
This is the fascinating story of how TVS Motor’s painful journey from 2000–2015 mirrors Ola Electric’s struggles today in 2025 — and why, for long-term investors, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
When TVS Was the “Ola” of Its Time
At the turn of the millennium, TVS Motor was India’s third-largest two-wheeler manufacturer, after Hero Honda and Bajaj Auto. It had big ambitions, but also big problems.
Between 2000 and 2010, customer dissatisfaction with TVS was rampant. Service centers were inconsistent, spare parts were often unavailable, and vehicle quality was patchy across models. Many early buyers of the TVS Victor and TVS Centra bikes complained about clutch failures, engine vibrations, and poor fuel efficiency.
But you’d hardly find this on record because this was the pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter, pre-YouTube India. Feedback traveled through word of mouth, not WhatsApp forwards. TVS, like every company in that era, could quietly work on its mistakes away from public glare.
Dealers often ran service shops in small garages with limited training or tools. Spare parts took weeks to arrive. The brand’s image — despite strong R&D — suffered because of inconsistent after-sales service. Sound familiar?
Back then, TVS was learning how to build a supply chain, train dealers, and standardize service. These are exactly the lessons Ola Electric is being forced to learn today — only much faster and much louder.
The Digital Difference: Why Ola Gets Criticized More
The biggest difference between TVS then and Ola now is timing.
TVS grew up in a world where bad news traveled slowly. Ola operates in a world where every customer is a journalist.
A small service delay in Mumbai today becomes a viral tweet within hours. YouTubers post videos of defective scooters to millions of viewers. WhatsApp groups amplify screenshots of frustrated chats with Ola service reps. The company’s brand perception can swing overnight — not because its products are bad, but because it operates in an era of hyper-transparency.
So, while TVS had time to mature quietly, Ola has to grow under a microscope. That doesn’t make Ola worse — it simply means it’s evolving in a more connected, impatient age.
TVS’s Journey from Struggles to Stability (2000–2015)
Let’s remember what happened next for TVS.
Around 2010, TVS began a slow but steady turnaround. The company invested heavily in its Hosur R&D center, introduced new quality-control systems, and launched the TVS Service Plus initiative to bring consistency to after-sales experience across India.
By 2013, it had entered a global partnership with BMW Motorrad to co-develop high-performance motorcycles — a major milestone that raised its technical credibility. Models like the TVS Apache RTR and TVS Jupiter were launched with far superior engineering and reliability compared to earlier models.
TVS also digitized its dealer network, standardized spare parts logistics, and started monitoring customer satisfaction through CRM data. In other words, it did what Ola is trying to do now — fix the “last mile” of service delivery.
Over the next five years, this patient groundwork transformed the company. By 2018–2019, TVS had become one of India’s most trusted two-wheeler brands, known for reliability, low maintenance, and consistent after-sales support. Its margins improved, its market share stabilized, and investors rewarded it with a solid rerating.
No one today remembers TVS as a company with “service issues.” Time and consistent execution erased those scars.
Ola Electric’s Growing Pains (2023–2025)
Ola Electric, led by Bhavish Aggarwal, is walking through that same corridor of chaos. The company has captured the imagination of the EV market with bold ambitions — in-house cell manufacturing, India’s largest EV factory, and aggressive product innovation.
But the Achilles heel is clear: after-sales service and operational execution.
Thousands of scooters are sold each month, yet the service network — which Ola chose to build directly instead of via dealers — is struggling to keep pace. Customers complain of long repair times, parts shortages, and inconsistent communication. Even Ola’s CEO admitted during the Q2 FY26 earnings call that service experience remains a key concern and that fixing it is the company’s top priority.
It’s not that Ola is ignoring the problem. They’ve launched the “Hyperservice” initiative to open spare parts access to independent garages and are actively recruiting and training EV technicians. They’ve begun tracking vehicle data in real time to predict faults before breakdowns. These are structural improvements, not cosmetic ones.
But customer perception takes time to catch up. Especially when every mistake becomes a trending topic online.
Why This Phase Is Necessary (and Temporary)
For investors and observers, it’s tempting to dismiss Ola as “unreliable” or “overhyped.” But if you zoom out, this is exactly what every auto manufacturer experiences during its infancy-to-adulthood transition.
Ola is still a young company — barely four years into full-scale vehicle production. TVS was founded in 1978 and took over 30 years to perfect its service network. Even Bajaj Auto’s modern reliability reputation didn’t come until the Pulsar generation matured after years of recalls and updates.
Every auto OEM’s maturity curve has the same pattern:
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Innovation & excitement phase (build products, attract early adopters)
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Execution & chaos phase (fix service, scale supply chain)
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Stabilization & trust phase (consistent profit, brand credibility)
Ola is currently deep inside phase two — the messy middle. TVS spent nearly a decade there. What matters is whether Ola learns quickly and structurally — not whether it avoids criticism.
What Bhavish Aggarwal Is Doing Right
From the recent earnings call and management commentary, Ola’s strategy seems clear:
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Prioritize profitability and cost efficiency before chasing volume.
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Vertical integration — producing its own 4680 battery cells — to reduce dependency on suppliers.
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Expand the service footprint through Hyperservice and third-party garage tie-ups.
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Make spare parts openly available to reduce downtime.
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Use real-time data to monitor product performance and preempt service issues.
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Maintain competitive pricing despite improving margins — avoiding the trap of discount-led market share wars.
These are exactly the kinds of structural moves that turned TVS around a decade ago. The key difference is that Bhavish must do it all in three years, not ten — because the market won’t wait.
Investor’s Lens: Learning from TVS’s Past
For investors, the story offers a broader lesson about patience and perspective.
Had you judged TVS Motor in 2005 purely by customer complaints, you might never have touched its stock. Yet between 2010 and 2020, TVS delivered a 10x return as it transformed into a financially strong, trusted manufacturer with global collaborations.
Ola, too, may be living through its most difficult phase — one that tests management discipline, investor patience, and brand resilience. If it can survive this period while maintaining financial prudence, it could emerge as the “TVS of the EV era.”
But this transformation won’t happen on social media. It will happen quietly — in training rooms, warehouses, and service centers — just as TVS’s did two decades ago.
The Road Ahead: From Complaints to Credibility
In the end, the parallel is almost poetic. TVS faced its reckoning in a mechanical era; Ola is facing it in a digital one. The core challenge remains the same: building trust through consistency.
Ola will need to:
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Prove the durability of its new Gen-3 scooters and upcoming electric motorcycles.
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Deliver tangible improvement in after-sales satisfaction over the next 4–6 quarters.
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Show that its Gigafactory and battery cell integration translate into lower costs and better reliability.
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Maintain transparent communication with customers and investors — acknowledging problems and showing measurable progress.
If it does, history may judge today’s criticism as nothing more than the growing pains of India’s next auto giant.
Conclusion: Every Great Auto Story Starts with Struggle
It’s easy to laugh at Ola’s service issues today, just as it was easy to complain about TVS in 2005. But building a world-class auto company is a marathon, not a sprint.
TVS took three decades to earn the public’s trust. Ola, with better technology, data, and capital, might take less than one. The journey, however, will still involve the same uncomfortable steps — criticism, course correction, and relentless execution.
In 2030, investors might look back and realize that the angry tweets of 2025 were just the background noise of a company growing up.
Written by Soumen, financial analyst and EV industry observer.
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