How Ola Was Started

The Indian taxi hailing industry is valued to be close to $10 billion. A lucrative and relatively untapped market such as this is bound to attract a lot of attention from entrepreneurs in India and around the world. Capitalising on this opportunity, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati launched India’s very own cab hailing startup, Ola.

The idea behind Ola came to Bhavish Aggarwal after he found himself stranded in the middle of the road on his way to Bandipur from Bangalore. Bhavish’s cab driver stopped the car in the middle of the journey and demanded a renegotiation of what Bhavish was paying and then proceeded to abandon him by the side of the road. Understanding the plight of travellers everywhere, he saw the amount of potential that an extraordinary cab booking service could have in this country. In 2010, he changed his business model from a holiday and tour planning company to a taxi hailing firm.

Joined by his co founder Ankit Bhati, Ola was launched in December 2010 as Ola Cabs. The taxi aggregator efficiently bridges the gap between cab owners and commuters adding a touch of technology to make lives and transportation easier. The company partners with drivers and cab owners to offer a variety of cab services to commuters across India. Leveraging the best of technology and building innovative solutions, the company expanded to reach 50+ cities by 2015. Serving 200,000 rides per day, which roughly translated to 6 million riders per month, the taxi hailing startup grew at a rate of over 40%.

However, the Ola journey was not as smooth as booking a cab on the app. In 2012, both the founders got a wake up call in the form of a website outage. Ankit Bhati, the Chief Technology Officer, who was in Bangalore at the time had to stay on call the entire night with the one man technology team in Mumbai to solve the issue. But that did not stop the duo. They shifted base from Mumbai to Bangalore and launched their mobile app, stepping up their game. The first version of the app, however, was a one touch destination for booking cabs.

Further, in 2015, the company also launched Ola Fleet, a cab lending arm, which operates as a subsidiary of ANI Technologies Pvt., Ltd., Ola’s parent company. By September 2015, the company was valued at $5 billion. In 2016, the company launched another flagship service Ola Play which became the world’s first connected car platform, transforming the commuting experiences and setting the tone for global innovation in this space. By the end of the year, started facing competition from Uber and another homegrown company TaxiForSure. Nevertheless, Ola persevered. The startup acquired TaxiForSure, launched another flagship service Ola Auto and continues to battle against Uber to become the majority shareholder of the market.

Currently, the company offers 11 services in over 106 cities and also launched its services in Australia. The company is backed by international venture capital firms like SoftBank, Tencent, Microsoft and eBay among others. According to latest reports, Ola is in talks with Singapore sovereign fund Temasek, to raise $1 billion in fresh funding. As of November last year, Ola is expected to be valued at close to Rs. 23,112 crores or $3.46 billion.

Bhavish Aggarwal’s journey from almost beginning a tourism company to establishing India’s biggest taxi hailing startup looks like a dream of every aspiring entrepreneur in the country. If anything, Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal’s story is proof that anything is possible if you have the will and the determination to start your journey.  Two IIT B-Tech graduates who started their careers in Microsoft and other startups have acquired 3 startups till date and raised more than $350 million from existing as well as new investors. The success story of Ola is the motivation everyone needs to book your next ride and start your own journey.