Ola Electric is now rolling out a guaranteed 14-day delivery campaign. As seen in the image below, an email has been sent out to a limited number of potential customers, mentioning guaranteed 14-day delivery for the S1 Pro electric scooter.
Delivery details not yet clear
However, the email doesn’t contain any further details, and it's unclear exactly when this 14 day countdown begins. The first step to purchasing an Ola S1 Pro is to make a reservation by paying Rs 499. One then confirms their purchase by paying a further Rs 20,000 when the purchase window opens, and then paying the balance amount closer to the delivery of the scooter. At some point during this journey, one also has to pay the FAME-II subsidy amount, which is then later refunded. At what point along the way this 14-day countdown begins is something there isn't too much clarity about at the moment.
We reached out to Ola with this doubt, as well as a few other questions, including matters such as what happens if Ola then fails to deliver the scooter in 14 days. While we did receive a response from the company, none of the questions were answered. This is the statement we received: “Pioneering the D2C distribution model, Ola has been able to set new benchmarks in the automotive industry for customer experience and delivery. Since beginning deliveries in mid-December last year, we were able to successfully reduce delivery TAT by clearing traditional bottlenecks of registration process and financial assistance significantly. The March purchase window saw us deliver the Ola S1 Pro within four weeks, subsequently even in two weeks in select cities. In fact, in the current purchase window, we were able to make deliveries within 24 hours of purchase even.’’
Offer only available to select customers
What we did learn, though, is that this is a very limited campaign, and these emails are only being sent to certain potential customers in major cities across India, where the company is confident that it can fulfil the promise. Ola has ramped up its production considerably, since it began deliveries last December – the company only registered 238 scooters in the final month of last year (as per the government's VAHAN portal), but managed to register close to 13,000 scooters in April, placing it ahead of Hero Electric and making it the largest electric two-wheeler maker in the country.
While the quantity of deliveries is steadily ramping up, quality continues to be a concern surrounding Ola scooters. The most recent development has been customer reports of front suspension breakage issues cropping up online.
Vishal Venugopal
Ved Janve
Azaman Chothia
