Ola’s electric scooters have been under the scanner over the last few months for the service issues, but CEO Bhavish Aggarwal seems to have had enough of the criticism.
Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal has lambasted former comedian Kunal Kamra for appearing to highlight the service issues in Ola’s scooters. Kamra had shared a picture of Ola scooters waiting to be repaired at a service center, and tagged people including Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari.
“Do Indian consumers have a voice? Do they deserve this? Two wheelers are many daily wage workers lifeline… Nitin Gadkari is this how Indians will get to using EV’s? @jagograhakjago any word? Anyone who has an issue with OLA electric leave your story below tagging all,” Kamra had posted.
Now it didn’t appear that Kunal Kamra had himself purchased on Ola scooter, or was personally the victim of its poor service. But he chose to share a random picture and seemed to be dragging the brand to his 2.4 million followers on X. This didn’t sit well with Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal, who called him out.
“Since you care so much @kunalkamra88, come and help us out!” Aggarwal repolied. “I’ll even pay more than you earned for this paid tweet or from your failed comedy career. Or else sit quiet and let us focus on fixing the issues for the real customers. We’re expanding service network fast and backlogs will be cleared soon,” he posted on X.
It appears that the jibe about the failed comedy career stung Kamra, who immediately shared a video of a crowd cheering for him when he had delivered a surprise performance last year. “On my failed comedy career here’s a clip from last year when I surprised an audience & opened for Grover… Anything else you arrogant, substandard, prick @bhash,” Kamra shot back.
But this made Bhavish Aggarwal double down. “Chot lagi? Dard hua? Aaja service center. Bahut kaam hai. (Did that sting? Did it hurt? Come to a service center. There’s lots of work). I will pay better than your flop shows pay you. Show your audience how much you truly care and whether you’re only gas and BS,” he posted.
Now it’s not everyday that a billionaire founder engages with a social media account in this manner, but Kunal Kamra has been known to pick fights with successful people to further his own career. Kamra had been a middling comedian when he’d pivoted to campaigning against PM Modi in the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections. He had even campaigned for the left’s Kanhaiya Kumar in Bihar, but after Kanhaiya had lost by over 4 lakh votes, and the BJP had won a record 303 seats, Kamra had largely stopped his political commentary. In 2020, Kamra had made headlines after he’d misbehaved with Arnab Goswami on a flight. But his career has seemed to peter away in the last few years, and he’s largely disappeared from the scene.
Kamra now seemed seemed to be similarly needling Bhavish Aggarwal, but it appears that Aggarwal was more than up for the challenge, and hit back where it hurt. This is what Indian builders need to do — building a product or service is much harder than simply sitting on the sidelines and passing judgement, and entrepreneurs with large social media followings of their own are realizing that they don’t need to take insults lying down. Kamra’s criticism wasn’t the result of any personal experiences with Ola’s scooters, and he seemed to be rabble rousing without having any skin in the game. And Bhavish Aggarwal’s public takedown of Kunal Kamra shows that the modern startup founder doesn’t only know how to build a product or service, get millions of customers, and go public, but also needs to know how to take down all manner of trolls along the way.