Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal is certainly one of India’s most determined entrepreneurs, but his relentless pace and management style seem to have vexed some managers and board members at the company.
A Bloomberg report has quoted more than two dozen former and current employees, who asked for anonymity, highlighting Aggarwal’s aggressive and unsparing behaviour at work.
Employees said there were instances where Bhavish Aggarwal used Punjabi epithets at staff and the teams that they were “useless”. They also claimed he tore presentation papers and meetings were cut short because he would get angry about either sentence constructions or quality of the paper itself.
In another incident, Aggarwal asked a custodial manager at the Ola Futurefactory to run three laps arounf the several-acre-large plant after he spotted a shuttered entryway that should have been left open.
Aggarwal told Bloomberg, anger and frustration were "me as a whole". “Passions and emotions run high and we are not on an easy journey,” he said. “But I don’t want to choose an easier journey for myself or for Ola."
While Ola Electric continues to make desperate attempts to ramp up sales, supply chain problems have delayed the production and some customers have highlighted the issue of faulty batteries and accident-causing software, spurring product recalls and apologies on Twitter.
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Around three dozen senior executives working across Aggarwal's two billion-dollar companies - Ola Electric and ANI Technologies Pvt, which runs Ola's ride-hailing operations - have quit within a year or two of joining, a higher turnover rate than peers.
Late last year, as internal challenges mounted and the global investment climate cooled, Aggarwal paused an initial public offering plan for ANI Technologies, which was last valued at USD7.5 billion according to researcher CB Insights.
Aggarwal has big ambitions for Ola Electric to rival the likes of Elon Musk's Tesla and Chinese conglomerate BYD Company.
Earlier this year, Ola had unveiled the concept images of its first electric car. The company did not reveal its name but said it would become commercially available in 2024.
