This quarter, they have a new CFO, and the stockholder newsletter has changed considerably. Download the latest stockholder’s newsletter here.
The Numbers
It is the discussion that is important here, but let’s first get the numbers out of the way.
For Q4 FY 26, Ola Electric reported operating revenues of INR 2650 million. This represents a decline of 56.6% over Q4 FY 25 revenues of INR 6110 million.
The company has reported a gross margin of 38.5%, up from 18.8% in Q4 FY 25.
The EBITDA losses stand at INR 3260 million, a 57% improvement from INR 7600 million a year back.
On a net basis, Ola Electric made losses of INR 5000 million, a 42.5% improvement from net losses of INR 8700 million recorded in Q4 FY 25.
Observations
The losses have moved at nearly the same pace as the drop in revenue. Ola is not improving as a company. It is shutting down systems, and we are seeing a temporary respite because of that.
The extent of bleeding is extraordinary. The company lost nearly 2 rupees on a net basis for every rupee it made as revenue. If we were to oversimplify things, Ola loses INR 260,000 on every scooter sold at INR 130,000.
Things They No Longer Want to Talk About
There are things that Ola no longer wants to talk about. For instance, the Shareholder Newsletter has dropped from 26 pages to 22 pages, and now the pages carrying their detailed financials are missing. This decline in information shared is a trend that we have noticed over the last few quarters as the company tries to hide weak points.
This quarter, they don’t want to tell us the number of cells they made, a number that used to occupy pride of place till the Q3 newsletter.
Here is a snapshot from the Q3 newsletter and Q4 newsletter side-by-side to illustrate what we mean.
The company had already stopped revealing the yield of the Cell-Gigafactory from its Q4 FY 25 results reporting onwards.
Link to the above Q4 2025 shareholders’ letter here.
So now, they don’t want us to know how many cells they made and what the yield rate of the plant is. Yet, their whole narrative is centered around the Gigafactory being such a good thing.
Perhaps the reporting changed because we referenced the past numbers here.
InsightEV – Global Electric Mobility
We reported that, as per the last disclosures, Ola Gigafactory was running at a 30 MWh scale.
So, this time, instead of real numbers, Ola decided to shower us with infinite vagueness. This is what they say about yield rates now.
They plan to ramp up the yield to 90%+ in the coming quarters. There are no numerical values associated with ‘coming’, so the present is hidden, and the future remains vague. That 90% number is important as it’s the global standard for competent cell gigafactories. Ola plans to get there in the ‘coming quarters’.
However, Bhavish, Ola Electric’s Founder-CEO, did mention during the analyst call that 15% of all Ola vehicles sold are now energized by the in-house 4680 cells. Bhavish also mentioned that the Ola Shakti home power backup system’s offtake has been slow because Ola does not have enough cells to put in the Shakti.
The above two statements give us the idea that in the last quarter, the Ola Gigafactory produced somewhere between 20 and 25 MWh of cells. (0.15 x 20256 x (any number between 5.2 and 9.1))
The other thing missing is the split between premium and mass market scooters in their sales. It was a ratio that is steadily falling in favor of mass market scooter and does not present the brand in a good light. So they decided to remove it.
For reference, the Premium-Mass ratio was around 0.34 in the last few quarters.
Promises and Caveats
This quarter, the newsletter is also full of promises that come loaded with caveats. For example, Ola wants to increase the capacity of its Gigafactory from the current planned 6 GWh to 20 GWh. The caveat is that they will do it if there is a PE investor who will put a big capital investment in the cell manufacturing business for Ola.
I’m sure that caveat holds for any business in India. If an investor is willing to foot the bill, everyone would be setting up Gigafactories.
Duh!
The Accounting has Changed
In some place in the newsletter, Ola shares that the revenue per scooter has improved from INR 119k in Q4 FY 25 to INR 131k in Q4 FY 26. This is considerable, but then Ola clarifies that from this quarter on, they recognise subscription revenues (software, extended warranty, service packages, etc.) as realised in full at the point of start. This doesn’t sound very nice but we leave the interpretation to financial analysts.
Popular or Notorious?
One of the things that the Investor Newsletter talks about is the brand recall for Ola. A study by Alvarez and Marsal, quoted heavily in the newsletter, puts Ola at the top of the brand recall when it comes to EVs. Does make us wonder why sales numbers are so low? It also makes us wonder if Ola is popular or notorious. Both mean the same and yet are opposites.
For clarity, Ola definitely is the most talked-about E2W brand in India. When thousands and thousands of customers take to social media to complain about the product quality and service issues, your popularity notoriety would soar.
What they also don’t disclose
At no point do they want to talk about how many Ola Shaktis they have sold. That is the name of their home power backup system that uses the 4680 cells. As we had pointed out earlier, the Shakti is exorbitantly priced when compared to the other home power backup options in the market.
But they announce yet another lollipop.
Ola has always been the market leader in making paper announcements. This quarter, the company announced that they are working on Mahashakti (Mega-Energy), a container-sized BESS system.
To make it look more reasonable, they also said that the BESS would be energized with LFP prismatic cells. To help the plausibility index, they also rolled out a timeline to show that the LFP prismatic is in the works.
Except when you look carefully, you realize that the timeline does not have any time values on the X axis beyond Jan 2026, which is already past. Not placing values on the x-axis has always been the hallmark of Ola’s stock market newsletters. The X-axis represents time, and if you remove the values there, you can stretch it out infinitely.
Cell Plant Rampup
From the analyst’s call, it was clear that Ola would like us to believe that they cannot sell too many scooters with 4680 cells because the plant does not have capacity. Ramp-up is slow. Which is the truth, except that they keep telling us that they can ramp up fast, as part of Ola’s very carefully articulated image of being a fast innovator.
On the promises front, it amounts to:
“We cannot ramp up the gigafactory fast because it is not supposed to ramp up fast. That is the nature of the beast. Yet we would like to promise that everything in the future will come very fast.”
Like these 16 products that sit in Ola’s announced product pipeline.
The future, in Ola speak, is just the day after tomorrow…except, tomorrow can stretch infinitely.
