Founder Bhavish Aggarwal's changing tunes shake investors' trust in Ola Electric

not backed by business logic can be construed as misleading investors, said Shriram Subramanian, founder at Ingovern Research Services, a proxy advisory firm.

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"Listed companies should not make very sweeping statements without planning granularly."

Ola Electric did not respond to queries emailed on Monday.

Among the series of flip-flops over the last seven months, the contrasting commentary on the expansion of the gigafactory stands out. On 14 July last year, after the earnings for the first quarter ended June, Aggarwal-led Ola Electric said in a letter to shareholders that "given that the EV market has evolved slower in recent quarters, we don't foresee the need to expand beyond 5GWh (capacity) till FY29." The company originally planned to reach 20GWh.

Based on this, the company reallocated ₹1,227 crore from the proceeds of its initial public offering to expand beyond 5GWh to other purposes such as R&D and regular corporate expenses.

The outlook changed after Q2 earnings were announced in November. Citing the launch of its Ola Shakti battery energy storage system (BESS) based on lithium-ion cells, the company noted that it would need 20GWh of capacity.

"To meet this demand, we are planning to expand our total cell-manufacturing capacity to 20 GWh by the second half of FY27," its letter on 6 November said. Aggarwal and the company did not clarify how funds would be allocated to expand beyond 20GWh.