INNOVATING THE FUTURE OF TRAVEL
“AS ONE OF THE FASTEST GROWING ECONOMIES IN THE WORLD, INDIA PRESENTS TREMENDOUS OPPORTUNITIES TO INNOVATE”
BHAVISH AGGARWAL, CO-FOUNDER AND CEO You started a very promising professional career with
Ola collaborated with YES Bank to set up Mobile ATMs in over
Microsoft, where you managed to file two patents and also got
30 locations across 10 cities. Do you think innovation like
three papers published in the international journals. What was
these would be key differentiator in Ola’s success going ahead?
your main motivation to enter into the entrepreneurial space and start Ola Cabs?
Definitely! Such activities are a result of our understanding of the market
My stint at Microsoft was a great experience, and has contributed a great
We are supportive of the government’s mission to digitalize transactions
deal to my learning. However, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and
and ensure transparency. In order to ease some of the inconvenience
create something that drives real change. Ankit and I started with Olatrip.
caused due to the sudden demonetization of currency notes, we
and having the local intelligence to respond to them in an agile fashion.
com, with the intention of selling holiday trips online, but eventually,
partnered with banks across several cities to install mobile ATMs in cabs,
moved to intra-city trips realising the massive need for organised
so that customers and driver partners could conveniently withdraw cash.
personal transportation, which was almost non-existent back then. We built the market ground-up and organised it at scale using technology.
We have several such locally-relevant initiatives that have succeeded
The Indian market is very different from the west. It’s not homogeneous;
in responding at the right time to local issues. When rains flooded
there’s no uniform middle class, or supply equality, hence, we segmented
the streets of Chennai, we responded with Ola Boats. They not only
the market and builtthe right use cases for the right demographic.
transported people from one place to another but also, played a role in
India’s per capita car ownership is just about 3%, as against that of
rescue operations and evacuations in the city. Ola’s Progressive Web
the US which is as high as 70%. We cannot reach the kind of car
App, an innovation of a much larger scale provides accessibility to
ownership that the west has, with the existing infrastructure. Instead,
Ola’s services in areas with poor Internet connectivity. The super light
we should work on the existing infrastructure and build shared mobility
version of the app enables the use of our platform across hundreds of
infrastructure to ensure every Indian has access to mobility.
new cities in rural India and addresses a significant market opportunity of customers and driver partners. Innovations such as these and many
On an average, over 300 million rides take place in India on a daily basis,
others are built ground up keeping India’s unique needs in mind.
we want to be a part of all of these trips, and add value to each of them, and every trip that every Indian takes!
What are the new innovation based themes Ola is working on and what has been your key differentiator in ensuring
Do you think the current innovation ecosystem in India
the current market share? Ola has recently partnered with
presents an untapped opportunity or is it a bubble waiting
Apple Music to introduce an in-car experience component,
to burst?
and would also be rolling out Electric Vehicles in major cities. What are the next set of innovations we can expect from OLA
As one of the fastest growing economies in the world, India presents
in the next two years?
tremendous opportunities to innovate. Within the transportation sector itself, rapid urbanization, smart cities, and lack of organized transport
Several localized innovations have helped us to improve customer and
across tier 2 and 3 towns of India presents a huge opportunity to provide
driver partner experience, grow faster across categories and across
streamlined Internet-based, on-demand mobility services. These coupled
geographies. In a short span of time, Ola has expanded its presence
with increased smartphone and Internet penetration and only 3% private
to 110 cities with a fleet of 600,000 vehicles. We don’t shy away from
car ownership in India, the scope to provide personal transportation
experimenting, our growth is the result of some bold and some well-
services becomes much wider. Take for example the financial technology
thought steps.
sector, digital payment platforms have changed the way Indians transact today, including bringing a large section of the population online by
We have scaled everything ground up, learning from the unique insights
providing them with simple solutions for day-to-day transactions.
we have from different parts of the country and building localised
OLA CABS |014
PDF compression, OCR, web optimization using a watermarked evaluation copy of CVISION PDFCompressor
