Ola Electric Mobility Ltd’s decision to slow the ramp-up of its home inverter business has sparked new scrutiny of its choice of lithium-ion battery chemistry after the segment fell well short of its revenue guidance for the March quarter.
Ola Shakti, part of the company’s cell division, was expected to generate around ₹100 crore in revenue during the quarter, based on the company’s guidance in November. However, company disclosures on 20 May showed the cell division brought in only about ₹4 crore in revenue, suggesting that Shakti’s ramp-up did not take place as the company had expected.
Industry experts and executives said part of the challenge stems from Ola’s use of nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries instead of lithium iron phosphate (LFP), which is cheaper, and considered safer and more stable for home energy storage products. NMC and LFP are the two dominant types of lithium-ion batteries used in vehicles and battery storage systems such as inverters.
Asked why the company chose to roll out the home inverters on LFP during the earnings call on 20 May, Bhavish Aggarwal, chairperson and managing director at Ola Electric, said, “Ola Shakti product will move to LFP once our LFP product comes out next quarter. We had started with NMC for our auto business and that's why we have decided to ramp-up Shakti slower because we are focusing our NMC into our auto business.”
“We wanted to be in the market with Shakti. Many customers actually are okay with paying the price of Shakti with the NMC product today, so we are starting to take that business. But by next quarter, Shakti will have LFP so that we can ramp it up faster,” Aggarwal added.
In response to Mint’s queries about the Ola Shakti missing its guidance, a spokesperson for Ola Electric said the focus over the past couple of quarters has been on strengthening the fundamentals of the auto business and preparing the cell business for scale.
“Q4FY26 was a market-entry quarter for Shakti. The Gigafactory has 2.5 GWh of operational capacity, installation to 6 GWh is largely complete, and more than 50,000 customer leads, including strong B2B interest, validate the demand thesis,” the spokesperson said
“NMC is the performance track for EVs, while LFP is the scale track for affordable EVs and energy storage. The pipeline is being built with the same discipline that is now visible in the auto business. Your queries and potential story regarding the missed guidelines have already been updated and factored in,” they added.
LFP is better and up to 25% cheaper: experts
According to industry estimates, LFP batteries are 10-25% cheaper than NMC batteries. Currently, two products are listed on Ola Electric’s website for Ola Shakti, both priced between ₹1.5 lakh and ₹2.5 lakh.
Ola Shakti was announced in October 2025 as part of Ola Electric’s bid to diversify its revenue and enter the battery energy storage solutions (BESS) market. The company has a 6GWh gigafactory from which it wants to roll out cells to be used in the auto sector and for battery storage.
Experts noted that using LFP chemistry in home inverters offers two primary advantages: it improves performance, safety, and the battery's lifespan, while also being cheaper.
“For businesses looking to scale lithium-ion inverter/storage products, LFP typically offers the best trade-off between safety, longevity, and cost. Other chemistries may still fit niche use cases, but LFP is increasingly the mass-market chemistry of choice for stationary storage,” said Harshvardhan Sharma, group head - automotive technology & innovation at Nomura Consulting.
Other battery makers such as Amara Raja Energy Mobility and Battrixx have also said LFP chemistry is the better choice for lithium-ion-based home storage solutions.
“For a country like India, where temperature ranges are quite extreme and charging conditions fluctuate, I think LFP is probably what we'd see, especially in the home setting,” Harshavardhana Gourineni, executive director at Amara Raja, had told Mint in December.
Anand Kabra, chairman and managing director at Kabra Extrusiontechnik Limited and its clean-energy and battery-tech division Geon, which offers lithium-ion home inverters, also said LFP is the best choice for home energy storage.
“In homes, batteries are cycled daily over a 10-15 year lifespan, making chemistry selection critical. LFP chemistry consistently outperforms alternatives such as NMC in these conditions,” Kabra said.
“LFP batteries offer superior thermal and chemical stability, significantly reducing the risk of thermal runaway, essential for residential environments with limited heat-management infrastructure. They also deliver substantially longer cycle life, often several thousand cycles with minimal capacity degradation, ensuring stable performance and lower lifetime costs,” he added.
