What caught my attention last month was that both companies held their big annual events where they shared plans for the year ahead. These two events proved to be a perfect showcase of how each company operates. Ola’s August 15 event this year was mostly a repeat of its 2024 edition where there were plenty of mega claims, but little in the way of clear timelines. The one new product that the company actually launched was the new S1 Pro Sport and while deliveries are supposed to begin in January 2026, there wasn’t a single physical unit of the scooter on display. In fact, the two new scooters that were ‘launched’ in 2024, the S1 Z and the Gig have yet to hit the road.

We’re also told there will be new, rare-earth-free motors and a Gen 4 platform (the company’s fourth scooter platform in as many years) ‘coming soon’. As for Ola’s indigenous 4680 Bharat Cell, the first products featuring it are yet to roll out, but the company is already talking about newer 46100 and 46120 cells – again, no timelines were shared.

The company’s Diamondhead concept motorcycle also returned in 2025 with even more fantastical claimed capabilities after first being unveiled in 2023. Among these are a 0-100kph time of under 2 seconds; the use of aerospace-grade materials including titanium, magnesium and carbon fibre; something called “self driving”; active aerodynamics, ergonomics and braking; and more. If the fact that many of these abilities don’t exist yet on any production motorcycle worldwide isn’t enough, Ola says it is targeting a launch in 2 years and a price tag of Rs 5 lakh. “Diamondhead will be the most amazing bike ever built, ever,” said Aggarwal. He further added, “It will truly, completely reimagine performance biking in the world.”

Fast forward 15 days and you arrive at the Ather event where the tone is far more measured and realistic. The company shows off a brand new chassis architecture – only its second vehicle platform since the original Ather S 340 scooter was unveiled in 2016. Ather went on to state that the first product on this simple yet scalable EL platform will debut next year, and it even showcased a rather production-ready-looking concept.

Like Ola, Ather also showed off the latest iteration of its operating system, and like Ola, Ather revealed its own radical concept, the Redux. The key difference is that Ather doesn’t make any outlandish claims of its capabilities or launch timeline.

The final interesting similarity between the two start-ups is that they both went public within the last year. In that time, Ola’s share value has dropped below its initial offering price (as of September 1), while Ather’s is significantly higher. Of course, there’s a lot that goes into a company’s evaluation, but the two recent annual events could serve some insight into why both companies are performing the way they are.