Within eight months of its commencement, Ola has shut down its used car division, Ola Cars, to focus more on electric vehicles and its mobility business. The company has also reportedly shut down Ola Dash.

The used car platform was launched last October to compete against fellow used car marketplaces like Droom, Cars24, Spinny and Olx. However, Arun Sirdeshmukh, the CEO of the new branch, quit the company last month, followed by operations being shut down in five cities. 

This isn’t the first time Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO at Ola, has quickly jumped from one idea to another. In fact, Aggarwal has had a history of opening and then quickly shutting down multiple businesses. 

Another one bites the dust

• Ola entered the food delivery business in March 2015 under the name Ola Cafe but shut down its services the following year. 
• In July 2015, the company launched Ola Store, a quick grocery delivery service in Bangalore. This service was also shut down in March 2016. 
• In 2017, Ola attempted to get into the food delivery business again, this time by acquiring FoodPanda. This business was also shut down in 2019, with around 1500 employees being laid off. Ola did, however, continue to run FoodPanda’s cloud kitchen business under the Ola Foods brand, but it reportedly never caught traction, and the brand is now selling its kitchen equipment. 
• Ola returned to the grocery delivery business in November 2021 with Ola Dash. However, in April, the company reportedly let go of its 2100 employees running its 200 dark stores in nine cities and put a hold on its expansion plans of reaching 500 stores across 20 cities in the next six months. 

The company now aims to use Ola Cars’ infrastructure, technologies and overall capability to grow the Ola Electric sales and service network. 

Despite being recently launched, Ola Electric is becoming one of the biggest electric vehicle companies in India. While the sales of its S1 and S1 Pro scooters have been good, the scooters have been riddled with problems and customers have been complaining of the same. 

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