Bhavish Aggarwal: How success came by Cab

No one is unfamiliar with Ola cabs today. With its easy availability, comfortable services it has become the first choice of many Indians to find their destinations. The mind behind this incredible business venture is Bhavish Aggarwal who has created a major transformation in the world of taxi services in India.

Born in Ludhiana, Punjab, the IIT Bombay (Mumbai) graduate started his success-driven venture at an early age. He started an online cab aggregator in Mumbai known as OLA cabs. Just like any other young man who graduated from IIT, he sought a good career opportunity, resulted in a Research intern in Microsoft Research India. Later he got a job as an Assistant Researcher at the same place.

As talents and prodigies cannot remain latent for a long time, the inquisitive nature of Bhavish always drove him to do something new and different. While he was working with Microsoft, he got three papers published in international journals and also filed two patents. Not only this, Bhavish experimented in different areas and founded his blogging site- desitech.in.

Many may think about what led him to start this business and how the idea of starting an online taxi service struck his mind. Bhavish left his job at Microsoft Research after two years, then he started an online company on short-duration tours and holidays online. One day, for business purposes he traveled from Bangalore to Bandipur. On the way, he had a very bad experience with the driver or the rented car. This incident led him to keep thinking about such problems and the idea of Ola cab emerged into his mind.

Ola cabs is a collective idea of Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati which strive to make connections between the cab owners and the commuters with the help of the internet, telephone, or mobile phone app. Believing in the ‘Zero’ inventory model for business, they did not buy any cars but rented them. Looking at Ola’s success story, it has become the most popular mobile app for cab booking.

Although the brutal effect of Covid 19 has influenced the business, the prodigious mind has weaved the path for a new venture. Working towards India’s green revolution, Ola Future Factory for electric vehicles (EV) is progressing by leaps and bounds.

The Co-founder and Group CEO Bhavish state the company’s future plan for India’s EV revolution that earlier electric vehicle was a remote idea and people ridiculed those who owned EV, India should take a leadership stance in the world in the space.

He said in ‘Yourstory’- ‘This will be the world’s largest scooter factory. Ola electric aims to bring India to the world stage of this electrification revolution’.    

The company is planning to manufacture 10 million two-wheelers by 2022. For his futuristic vision and outstanding work at an early age, he was awarded the ‘Mbillionth Award South Asia 2013’, ‘Best start-up of the year by IAMAI, ‘HATT awards’ and listed in ’30 under 30’ by Hindustan Times and Forbs. Undoubtedly, his inspirational story will motivate many young people of India.