Ola Cabs: India’s First and Fastest Mobility Unicorn
By Sonali Munda
About the Company and its Founder(s):
Ola cabs (now owned by ANI Technologies) is an Indian multinational ride-sharing company. It is India’s largest mobility platform and one of the largest ride-hailing companies in the entire world. It offers its mobility services by connecting customers and drivers through its app. It serves 250+cities across India, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia employing over 2.5 million driving partners. Its headquarters are in Bangalore, India. This Indian multinational was founded by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati on December 3, 2010.
It offers its mobility services in cabs, bikes, auto-rickshaws, and metered taxis allowing its customers convenient and transparent ride experiences. Along with offering a broad range of vehicle options, Ola also diversifies its services in finances and cloud kitchens. “ANI Technologies”, Ola’s holding company owns and operates Ola Fleet, Ola Financial Services, and even Ola Foods.
In January 2018, Ola’s first overseas business started off by setting up its market in Australia, in New Zealand by September of the same year, and then further expanding its market to the UK in March 2019.
Founders’ share in the Company:
As of April 22, Bhavish owns a 36.6% stake in Ola Electric, and in its parent entity, “Ola cabs” (ANI Technologies) he owns an 8.7% stake.
Investors and their Investments in the Company:
Below is the table of the number of investors invested in Ola along with the investment amount:
Acquisitions by the Company:
The following are the notable acquisitions by Ola:
TaxiForSure Ridlr Foodpanda India
Acquired for $200M Acquired for $50M Acquired for $32M
(March 2015) (April 2018) (December 2017)
Pikup Avail Finance Zipcash
Amount disclosed Amount disclosed Amount disclosed
Geotagg
Amount disclosed
Current Market Valuation of the Company:
As of January 24, 2022, the current valuation of Ola Electric is $5 billion.
Competitors:
Though Ola became the first largest mobility company in India, later, the country witnessed a number of Ola-like companies and those are the following:
DiDi Global
Grab
Uber
Meru Cab Company
Careem
ZoomCar India
Gett
Revv
Lyft
99
TaxiForSure
Hailo
Drife
History of the Company:
The launching of this startup has got quite an interesting backstory. Ola wasn’t a ride-sharing company before, rather it started off as a travel company known as Olatrip.com that offered weekend trips and holiday packages.
One day when Bhavish had to travel from Bangalore to Bandipur due to his former business matter, he faced a horrendous cab experience. He was stopped in the middle of the route and asked for a re-negotiation of what Bhavish was paying. But, of course, Bhavish refused to pay the overpriced amount, so the cab driver abandoned him in the middle of the route. This plight gave Bhavish the idea of rebranding Olatrip.com to Ola Cabs that could provide hassle-free rides to the people with a rating system of the entire ride experience including the customer’s experience with the driver and then this rating system would be directly proportional to the brand image. Hence, less chance of misbehavior and inconvenience is provided to the customers from the driver's side.
However, just like any other Indian parents, Bhavish Aggarwal’s parents did not support him initially from the time when he started off as a travel company, nevertheless, he got supported by the very first round of angel investment from Kunal Bahl, Anupam Mittal, Rehan Yar Khan. Ola’s goal was to do the best possible for its customers from attending customer calls to driving the passengers to their destination while managing the operations. There have been days that Bhavish had himself driven the cab to drop his customer when the driver didn’t show up at the specified time. Days after hard work, the buzz of Ola cabs started showing up when every driver and even many part-timers craved to get themselves attached to the brand name of “Ola”.
The average distance covered by Ola vehicles a day is 43,40,717 km. That’s more than ten times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
With the same rate of speed as its vehicles, Ola became the fastest mobility startup to enter the unicorn club of India. It is also the very first ride-sharing company to enter the unicorn of India.
SWOT Analysis of the Company:
SWOT is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, and SWOT analysis of a company helps develop business strategies for the company:
Strengths-
As stated before Ola is the very first mobility platform in the Indian market so, it had its first mover advantage to take over the mobility space in the market.
Ola offers a broad range of services starting from commuting locally to traveling in outstations and hiring rentals and share cabs.
Ola uses state-of-the-art technology along with strong data analytics that helps to forecast the demand in any region. The strong use of data analytics and the latest technology makes the demand forecast in the app most accurate so that the cab services could be availed to customers in a hassle-free way.
Due to the dynamic price model, Ola has been able to supply cars efficiently as this type of price model changes according to the demand in the particular region or bad weather conditions.
Weaknesses-
To book a ride in Ola one needs to compulsorily be connected to the internet. But countries like India where the connectivity of the internet is still a major issue, it lessens the opportunity for growth in this mobility business.
In a country like India where the majority of the people are still illiterate in terms of new media and are “Luddites”, it is difficult for them to use the Ola app and book a ride.
There is very less or no control over drivers. Ola being a ride-sharing company, ironically doesn’t hold any control over drivers, who play an important role in making the brand name. Also, any misbehavior on behalf of the driver is directly proportional to the brand image as the Ola app holds a rating system of the ride experience as well as a rating on the experience with the driver.
Opportunities-
The government’s initiative to promote digitalization across the country by penetrating the internet to even remote places has got Ola a great opportunity to extend its services to these regions including tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
Ola has got a great opportunity to capitalize in tier 2 and tier 3 cities where the government and public transportation are very poor in nature.
Threats-
The major threat is basically the emergence of Uber. People are switching from Ola to Uber due to low switching costs. There have also been cases where the Ola drivers have got seen misbehaving with their customers so, most of the customers easily switch to the latter.
The increasing competition in the market due to the emergence of Uber majorly.
Taxi providers are constantly being threatened by the government’s changing rules and regulations.
Future of the Company:
Ola was supposed to go public in the first quarter of this year and file its DRHP by December 2021. But it seems that its IPO has been delayed and it is expected to happen by the end of this year or by the beginning of 2023.
Ola plans to focus more on its subsidiary product, “Ola Electric” to improve its cab services and their operations.
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