10/9/24, 10:47 AM Bhavish Aggarwal and the death of the ‘boring’ Indian CEO - Long and Short by The

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Bhavish Aggarwal and the death of the ‘boring’ Indian

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Irate customers taking to social media in droves and even torching a showroom run by the electric-two-
wheeler maker is awful enough. Then, the chief executive decides to twist the knife with his own posts on
X, formerly Twitter.

On Sunday, Kunal Kamra, the stand-up comic who never met a spat he didn’t relish, called attention to Ola
customers’ mounting service-related complaints. Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola’s founder-CEO who’s quick to
bristle at any criticism, slammed Kamra for his “paid tweet” and referred to his “failed comedy career”.

The argument quickly devolved into a slanging match. It may have been a source of mirth for onlookers,
but Ola investors paid the price the next day. Over Rs 3,600 crore (US$429 million)—or 8%—was lopped
off the company’s market cap. The stock recouped some of the losses on Tuesday, but it’s still down nearly
40% from its post-listing peak in August.

The past few months have been rough for Ola. The undisputed leader of India’s fledgling electric-two-
wheeler market once, Ola has seen its market share quickly erode.

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10/9/24, 10:47 AM Bhavish Aggarwal and the death of the ‘boring’ Indian CEO - Long and Short by The Ken

Much like Elon Musk, whom he has taken a dig at, Aggarwal doesn’t care for corporate etiquette that
expects CEOs, especially those of listed companies, to be mind-numbingly boring in their public
statements if it means avoiding an unnecessary row.

Reading an interview with an Indian CEO can often be like watching paint dry. Forget being critical of the
government or a regulator or espousing a contentious cause; they refrain from naming competitors, too,
even if it’s to compliment them.

This is partly, and unfortunately, a function of what journalists deem acceptable. When Thierry Delaporte,
a former CEO of IT-services company Wipro, was asked about its retention strategy at a press conference
in 2022, he said: “The team has done an incredible job. Maybe in the past, we [Wipro] never paid enough
attention or spent enough time to explain [to our employees] in which way we are different.”

Perfectly innocuous, right? But a financial newspaper termed the remark a “slip-up”, and a “bizarre” one
at that, simply because something like this doesn’t happen often enough. Contrast this with Howard

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Schultz and Bob Iger’s disapproval of their respective successors (and, in Iger’s case, also his predecessor)
at Starbucks and Disney.

Then, there is Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, who made light of Microsoft Copilot AI and called it the new
“Microsoft Clippy”.

It’s not that India’s corporate world was devoid of such characters until now. This is Rajiv Bajaj, managing
director of the eponymous two-wheeler company, in 2019:

“I have been in meetings where manufacturers who have failed in IC (internal combustion) engines want
to change the world with electric vehicles. And then there are existing two-wheeler makers who, when it
comes to making EVs, invest in South-based companies—as if it is the job of someone else to make EVs for
them,” Bajaj said.

So, when all these people talk about future, he said, “I prefer to start with our past that we are not a
battery or steel maker, we are not a failed two-wheeler company and we are not a venture capitalist
company who fund someone else to manufacture for us, we are engineers who do our own work”.

But the likes of Bajaj have been exceptions that prove the rule. That’s beginning to change thanks to CEOs
of tech companies, several of which have listed since 2021. Under Deepinder Goyal, Zomato was brave
enough to experiment with the idea of not doing the customary quarterly earnings call with analysts before
giving in. And he has no qualms about setting the cat among the pigeons. A few days ago, he said
Zomato’s rival Swiggy—which is set to join it on the bourses—sponsored the latest season of Shark Tank
India and kicked him out as a judge.

The fact that these founders are increasingly candid, even where it concerns their companies, is
remarkable. Vijay Shekhar Sharma of Paytm* regretted not choosing the right investment bankers for its
initial public offering. But none of his peers are quite as unrestrained as Aggarwal. From sparring with
Bajaj to endorsing a 70-hour workweek, he has been predictably unpredictable.

But there are many who make a case for leadership that’s closely tied to drabness:

Sometimes when I name them as my most admired CEOs, people call them dull and stuffy. But they do
several things that help their companies thrive.

First, they emphasize products over personalities.

They believe their company’s products and their value to customers should be the stars of the story, not the
lifestyle choices, gaffes or tweets of C-suiters. Even when top executives act as spokespeople for the
company, rolling out new products and services on stage at big events, there is value in emphasizing the
personality of the products rather than the executive.

The Case for Having a Boring CEO, The Wall Street Journal

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10/9/24, 10:47 AM Bhavish Aggarwal and the death of the ‘boring’ Indian CEO - Long and Short by The Ken

Interestingly, Zomato and Ola Electric have gone public at a time when a new class of retail investors is
entering the stock market. These individuals may not pay close attention to a company’s price-to-earnings
ratio or its return on equity. They want to put their money on a company simply because they’re users, or
even fans, of its products. Food delivery or electric scooters are more familiar to them than aluminium or
pharmaceuticals.

What’s more, they see the companies as an extension of their founders, whom they’re willing to accept,
warts and all.

But most CEOs, especially those who are hired to run a company instead of earning that position by dint
of being an entrepreneur, will find little value in being blunt, as The Economist rightly observed:

Executives who depart from blandness to express an opinion put their careers at risk. They enjoy little
upside and risk plenty of downside. If the executive is the founder, or the business is well-run, they may be
spared. It helps if you apologise quickly. John Mackey, chief executive of Whole Foods, an American
grocer, dubbed Barack Obama’s health-care reforms “fascist” in 2013 but quickly said he regretted his
remarks. He is still in his job.

That’s a wrap for this week. Please write to [email protected] with your thoughts or leave a
comment on our onsite edition.

Best,
Seetharaman

*Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an investor in The Ken.

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