Vivek Kaul | Kunal Kamra versus Bhavish Aggarwal: Streisand effect and a dhishum dhishum for the ages

My Sundays are fixed. I like to get up late. Have a lazy breakfast, like I have on the other six days of the week, along with a cup of strong black coffee (well, you can’t really make an Americano at home. It just doesn’t sound right.) And then l like to read a police procedural. And do nothing else through the day. 

But then on 6 October the routine was broken as standup comedian Kunal Kamra and Ola Electric founder Bhavish Aggarwal indulged in some public dhishum dhishum on X, formerly known as Twitter. The jabs just kept coming and as the day went on outsiders like me had a lot of fun. I mean, which outsider doesn’t like a good dhishum dhishum match, especially when no one is getting physically hurt.  

Now, I will not get into summarizing what exactly happened on X because that has been written about quite a lot by now. What I would like to do is answer a few questions that were raised by tech bros and so-called entrepreneurs around the clash.  

1) What incentive did Kunal Kamra have in talking about Ola Electric scooters? Well, I don’t know Kamra personally. I have never met him. Never seen any of his shows though I have seen most of his videos and rather enjoyed them. He used to follow me on X once upon a time. Now, he doesn’t. Wonder what I did to offend him? Kamra, tune ye kyon kiya?  

Jokes apart, whether Kamra had an incentive or not doesn’t really matter, simply because the issue he raised was important: the quality of Ola Electric.  

As Alisha Sachdev pointed out in an excellent newsreport in Mint: “The Bengaluru-based company has been receiving nearly 80,000 complaints every month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation, and its service centres are struggling to keep pace. On some days, the number spikes to 6,000-7,000 a day, causing long delays, leaving service staff overwhelmed and customers frustrated, they said.”  

Further, as a newsreport in the Business Standard pointed out: “Ola’s month-on-month sales in September fell by 10.6% to 24,665 units, down from 27,589 units in August.” A company selling around 25,000 units of scooters every month is getting nearly 80,000 complaints every month. Clearly, there is a problem. And a major one.  

2) A few Bengaluru-based tech bros, who think that raising VC money and getting a high valuation in this era of easy money is actual business, offered the explanation that any new technology takes time to mature. That’s true. But what is also true is that people of this country are using their hard-earned money to buy a product with several quality issues. Don’t they deserve better? What wrong have they done?  

Also, should the lives of people be put at risk because a company in a hurry to roll out a product and in a hurry to list on the stock exchanges decided to sell scooters that may not have been fully ready? May be the tech bros can tell us that.  

3) Aggarwal himself tried some false bravado and called Kamra a failed comedian and then suggested that he should come and help Ola out. Well, Kamra didn’t create these problems. Why should he help solve them? But as someone who has 2.4 million followers on X, he is entitled to talk about issues he feels about. You can ignore him if you want to (Aggarwal could have done that, but he chose not to.) But you can’t ask him to solve problems he has had no role in creating.  

4) Of course, some raised the nationalism bogie as well, as seems to be very common these days. But since when did Make in India become about receiving subsidies from the Indian government and then making and selling substandard products to the Indian public? Maybe the tech bros can tell us about that as well and leave this whataboutery to the politicians.  

5) I think this is the most important point I will end up making in this piece. On 7 October the stock price of Ola Electric Mobility fell 8.3%. On 10 October the stock price closed at ₹90.8, down by around 38% from the peak closing price of ₹146.03 on 19 August. The stock was issued at ₹76. 

Now, that Ola Electric has a problem is obvious to anyone who can think for themselves. (For those who can’t, why are you still reading this?) And Aggarwal’s reaction to Kamra’s tweets on 6 October just added to that problem. In fact, Aggarwal’s rather public meltdown should be an excellent example of a version of what is known as the Streisand effect.  

In 2002, the California Coastal Records Project was founded. The Wikipedia entry for the project points out that it “documents the California coastline with aerial photos taken from a helicopter flying parallel to the shore”. As Sam Tatam writes in Evolutionary Ideas, the aim of the project was to provide “researchers with free and readily accessible aerial images of the eroding coast”. 

More than 12,000 pictures were clicked as a part of the project. Of this, image 3,850 led to a $50 million lawsuit. As Tatam writes: “The plaintiff was Barbara Streisand. In 2003, singer Barbara Streisand sued Kenneth Adelman, photographer and creator of the project, for distributing aerial pictures of her mansion in Malibu. Her lawsuit claimed it was an invasion of her privacy, with the image showing access to her private residence.” 

Before the lawsuit, the image had been downloaded only a handful of times, actually, just six times, including twice by her lawyers. However, Streisand’s legal action drew significant media attention, inadvertently increasing public interest in the photograph. As a result, the image was downloaded millions of times, highlighting the unintended consequences of attempting to suppress information in the digital age. 

Once she had filed the case, the interest in the photo of Streisand’s mansion went through the roof. As Tatam writes: “As news outlets around the world reported on Streisand’s outrage and attempts to suppress this information, the photo quickly received more than a million views online.” 

This came to be known as the Streisand effect. What happened to Aggarwal and Ola Electric is perhaps a version of this phenomenon. If Aggarwal had been actually working on that Sunday, given that he has said in the past that not working over a weekend is a Western concept, he would not have bothered immediately reacting to Kamra’s tweets. May be later in the day his communication team would have put out measured responses.

By immediately and aggressively reacting to Kamra’s tweets he brought full public focus to problems related to Ola Electric scooters. The issue blew up over both mainstream and social media, resulting in the price of the stock falling by more than 8% the next day.  

The point being that it’s one thing being the bossman at an unlisted company and expressing whatever you want to say on social media, and it’s totally another thing doing the same as the bossman of a listed entity. If the market doesn’t like what you are saying, the stock price will take a beating as it did in Ola Electric’s case.  

The Streisand effect bought increased focus to the negative issues surrounding Ola Electric and that ended up hurting the shareholders of the company. An individual running a company should understand something as basic as this. If they don’t then they should not be on social media. Aggarwal clearly needs better media training.  

6) Over the years, Aggarwal has been hailed as a pioneer in India’s electric vehicle market and his social media presence credited with helping galvanize interest in electric vehicles among Indian consumers. Now, that might be overdoing doing it and not just a bit.  

What people forget is that all this ultimately fed into the company being able to sell its shares through an initial public offering at a massive valuation, given that it doesn’t make any money yet.  

Also, with all the complaints around Ola’s electric scooters it is safe to say that the company and its bossman have hurt and not furthered the overall cause of electric vehicles in the country. There are so many videos and photographs of Ola scooters catching fire and piling up at service centres because they haven’t been repaired.  

As a September report on NDTVProfit.com points out: “At Thane’s service centre, 3,500-4,000 Ola Electric scooters are awaiting repairs. In Vashi, Ola Electric is accepting service requests without generating a so-called job card.”   

Dear Reader, I am sure you can Google up other similar reports, if you haven’t already.   

In fact, a report on Businesstoday.in says that the “Ministry of Heavy Industries has begun a probe into the allegations of service-related issues faced by Ola Electric users.”   

Or as Sachdev of Mint, whose newsreport I quoted from earlier, reported: “The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA)… has decided to pursue class action against Ola Electric, following thousands of unresolved complaints lodged with the National Consumer Helpline (NCH).” Further, as Nidhi Khare, secretary, department of consumer affairs, told Mint: “The CCPA’s suo motu action comes amid allegations of non-cooperation from Ola Electric.” 

The Business Standard newsreport referred to earlier points out: “The company, which cornered over half of the electric two-wheeler market with a commanding 52% share in April, has seen the figure plummet to 27% by September.” The invisible market is doing what the market does best.  

7) The marketing around a physical product can only influence the minds of the first generation of consumers who end up buying the product. But then they will use it and when they use it the product should work. Even if there are glitches with a few units sold, all the marketing in the world isn’t going to help. Remember Tata Nano? And has there been any Indian product that was marketed as much as the Nano?  

Finally, to conclude, a friend recently asked, why have we gone so IPO crazy. Why are we buying so much rubbish that’s being sold?  

Well, we live in an era when well-moulded plastic is being sold as a two-wheeler and people have been buying it. Those who haven’t been buying it are busy telling us that that moulded plastic is a motor vehicle.  

As my favourite Bob Dylan line these days goes, people are crazy and times are strange.