I have known Zoeb Karampurwala for more than two decades. There are a lot of parallels in our careers – though admittedly, compared to me, Zoeb has been many notches higher in the career trajectory. One thing that I have always wanted to do – but never managed to do so far – is to write a book. So when Zoeb announced that his book is out, I had to read it. The book came in via Amazon on Tuesday and by Wednesday it had been devoured, in two sittings.

It is an autobiography with EV and career gyan sprinkled in. Of all the mentors Zoeb mentions in the acknowledgments, I would single out his uncle Hakimuddin Ali; I would have loved to have him as a relative. Hakimuddin’s advice to Zoeb when he was starting his career still resonates. The only things that matter in the auto industry are R and D, plant operations and sales. The rest are humbug. At the start of his career, Zoeb had to choose between Tech and Management; Zoeb wisely chose tech. The book starts in 1999 when Zoeb joined Tata Motors from COEP. The turning point for Zoeb was when he is sent to Spain to join the Hispano team. The Spanish experience of building a hybrid bus helped shape his tech leadership. In my mind, going in for a series hybrid was a good decision. It helped TML’s electrification journey in later years.

Alas, the Hispano story ended in 5 years. Zoeb comes across as an eternal optimist – so I had to turn to Gemini Akka to find out what went wrong at Hispano. Over a five-year period, Tata Hispano accumulated operating losses exceeding 60 million euros; at the same time, the European bus market experienced a significant downturn, with a 40% drop in registrations. Tata Motors did not predict any positive changes in the near future, making continued production unviable. 

Some reflections on how the wrongs could have been corrected would have helped. The positives are there – TML’s Indian product line has definitely benefitted from JLR and Hispano.  Maybe the Hispano experience helped TML manage JLR better. Getting local government buy-in is key, especially in an industry marked by government purchases and subsidies. Would a minority stake in Hispano have helped? Or getting a local partner, aka Toyota Kirloskar?

On his return to India, Zoeb started doing what he should have been doing in Spain in the first place – building electric buses. And that is what got him to meet his future mentor, Bhavish Aggarwal. Bhavish had made a name with Ola cabs – and was on the lookout for the next big story. And instead of googling for ideas, he crisscrossed the world – meeting 300 people and their ideas.  Zoeb was part of the Tata Motors team that hosted Bhavish. And a year later, Zoeb was part of Bhavish’s team.

The Last Fire in the book’s title – refers to the loss of the spark (plug) in the auto industry – with the rise of the EV. The spark seems to be stretching with hybrids, but there is no doubt that electric is here to stay. Bhavish’s interaction with competition before announcing the launch of Ola Electric – was a great benchmarking exercise. Bhavesh’s non auto – outsider perspective helped – as the questions were more first principle ones.

Elon Musk and Bhavesh Aggarwal have been compared for a long time. I would  like to draw another comparison – Bhavesh and Donald Trump. Both have not been fans of the mainstream media – and as a result have received bad press. Zoeb’s book is like Fox news – looking at Ola from the eyes of a believer. And in a country that has always been hampered by a low, excuse me for the phrase Zoeb, Hindu rate of growth, Bhavish’s sprints in scaling up have made India question its old beliefs: building Asia’s largest factory in a 400 acre campus with 6 assembly lines, battery assembly and testing automation which had a capacity of lakhs from day one. Did speed and scale help? Will Ola face the same scale problem as Chinese manufacturing  with their scale now exceeding global demand?

But stop. We are jumping the gun. Zoeb takes us through the initial days of Ola Electric, when there was no plan to get into automobiles at all. The jump was to be from cab rentals to battery rentals. The initial pilot for battery swapping was done in Gurgaon. And that is where Zoeb joins the picture. We read about his struggle with swapping – an industry that did not exist, when Bhavish and company set their sights on it. The ideations on battery weight, the dead km that a rickshaw would have to run before it came to a swap station et al. Ola Cabs was a company founded on data – and Bhavish would base all his decisions on data – customer truths – as Zoeb likes to call it. Customer feedback during product development was an important ingredient of product success. The Ola ambition was to build, not just a product, but an ecosystem.

Should Bhavish have continued with swapping? Why Bhavish pivoted from battery swapping to two wheelers does not come out very clearly in the book. Chetan Maini, the Reva founder, sold his electric car venture to get into battery swapping. And there is a growth story there too – with 250 cr revenue, I hope Chetan is making some money in the business. At a battery level, I am not convinced why Ola chose NCA. Bhavish and company have announced the manufacturing of the 4680 Bharat cell, which alas is also NMC. My money would still be on LFP – but then energy density and fast charging capability would have been significant criteria for choice of chemistry. Thankfully, Ola has done well in safety – with only one reported case of battery fire.

Ola got most of the tech right in the S1 Pro: Huge boot space, Touch screen cluster, Infotainment systems, Cruise control and Type 6 charger. Digital models helped in speeding up development. Bhavish’s hands-on involvement meant quick decision making. Ola made sensible Buy Vs Make decisions: Electronics, motor and battery.  A mini DC DC converter was used in the BMS to make the lead acid auxiliary battery redundant. Also creditable was the use of wire bonding to make the battery cell safe and serviceable.

The high point of Zoeb’s writing is when he shares his troubleshooting experiences. And more importantly the processes used. In an era of Google Meets and Zoom, Zoeb’s insistence on getting all Hispano stakeholders in the same physical room was good troubleshooting practice. Add to that the advice of his Ola boss: Umesh Krishnappa – before solving, replicate the problem. Or Umesh’s borrowing from consumer electronics’ industry of HALT – Highly accelerated Life Testing. One takeaway for me was Bhavish’s insistence on hand written memos during problem solving. Here is the template:

·         What are we solving?

·         What decision is needed?

·         What’s the logic behind it?

·         Annexures – data, calculations, vendor inputs, trial results

There are two examples that Zoeb quotes to illustrate the perils of quick fixes and the wins for root cause analysis:

·   During the Gurgaon battery swapping days, there was a heat build up issue during the fast charging of batteries. Zoeb decided to lower the charging rate by 20%. While the quick fix reduced heating – it impacted field battery inventory management. Customer wait times increased – and satisfaction scores plummeted. It took at 3 am call from Bhavish to underscore the importance of doing a root cause analysis. It turned out that there was an issue with swapping station ventilation which was causing the heat buildup. That was fixed in 48 hours.

·   The other example he quotes is the S1 Pro launch event. Test riders experienced a motor derating during use of the hyper mode on the scooter. The team had debated and gone ahead with a software update a few hours before the launch. An undetected bug in the code was the culprit. More than quick fixes, this episode talks of the rigors that every part of the vehicle should be tested with. Software, no less than hardware.

Ola’s management philosophies come out as a mixed bag. Let’s start with HR. Getting folks from the consumer electronics industry helped – especially for the cluster. Hire for trajectory, not current skill was a good rule to live with. Zoeb also shares a good personal tip for interviews– speak like you are already part of the team. But one wonders whether speed and scale sapped up Zoeb when he ramped up his team from 40 to 400 in a matter of 2 months. He writes about interviewing 2000 people in that time period. Did that leave him any bandwidth for tech work? Another Ola practice which I have not made up my mind on: Should one interview one’s own future boss?

The book would have been better off if it had addressed the HR attrition woes that plagued Ola – and probably continue to do so. And also the underwhelming performance on the after sales service front – though to be fair to Zoeb, most of the service troubles started after he had left Ola. But most troubling is finance. I wonder what has happened to Zoeb’s ESOPs. Ola Electric share price has declined by 12.1% over the past six months and has declined by 70.07% over the last year. In FY 26 Q1 – Ola Electric sold 58,000 units, a decrease from 108,000 units in the same quarter FY 25. Revenue was Rs. 828 cr – and losses were Rs. 428 cr. High BoM costs and aggressive pricing are not helping Ola’s cause.  

In a way, both Ola’s 3 wheeler experiment – and Hispano demonstrate that accepting failure, before loss accumulation makes you go belly up, is a very important survival tool. Will Bhavish and Ola Electric survive independently? Or will they go the Ather way, seeking safe shores of established players like TVS or Bajaj. In hindsight, was all of Bhavish’s speed designed for timing the IPO and an exit for Ola Electric’s initial investors?

You can order the Kindle version of the book here. Ola inspired low price – Rs. 150 only: https://amzn.in/d/eioOC4W