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Lokesh Choudhary · · 7 min read‘India’s Elon Musk’ is on a warpath
Shortly after Uber entered India in 2013, the ride-hailing giant was facing constant setbacks. In 2015, it received around 400,000 fraudulent bookings from 90,000 fictitious accounts.
Uber alleged that the company behind these bookings was none other than Ola, one of its rivals in the country.
Founded in 2010 by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Ola was trying to take on Uber at its own game, similar to what Didi Chuxing did in China.
“The analogy that I give in India is that this is like [the] Vietnam war. We are the local guerrillas. We have the Americans carpet bombing us,” said Aggarwal at an event back in 2017, referring to Ola’s competition with Uber.
Today, Ola’s expansion journey is unlike other ride-hailing firms globally, moving into diverse sectors such as electric vehicles and generative AI. In contrast, other ride-hailing firms like Grab, GoTo, and Uber have extended their businesses into related industries such as food delivery, ecommerce, and financial services.
Despite Aggarwal stepping into completely different sectors, he has managed to achieve a level of success in some of them.
Image credit: Timmy Loen
Recently, Ola said its mobility business hit operating profitability with an EBITDA of 2.5 billion rupees (US$30 million) for the financial year ended March 2023.
Ola Electric is also the top-selling electric two-wheeler brand in the country, with a 33% market share in 2023 despite instances of its bikes catching fire.
This is akin to Elon Musk’s ability to acquire and build successful businesses in completely different industries from EVs to social media.
Aggarwal even draws a direct comparison with Musk’s Tesla by saying, “Tesla is for the West, Ola [is] for the rest.”
So how does this Indian Musk build such large businesses in unrelated sectors?
Ola didn’t respond to Tech in Asia’s queries for this article.
Building on acquisitions
The answer lies in Aggarwal’s acquisition and scaling strategy. Ola has acquired 11 companies in the last eight years.
A bumpy ride
Hustle culture hurts
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Ola co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal has employed an aggressive playbook to expand into EVs and genAI.
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