STARTUP OF THE YEAR - Standing Tall, the Best of the Best
Ola represents a hugely disruptive innovation
and fast-paced growth, making it a worthy Unicorn
... and the award goes to
Bhavish Aggarwal Ola, Bengaluru
Ola cofounder and Chief Executive Bhavish
Aggarwal is a fan of technology that provides seamless efficiency--he owns an
all-Mac suite of gadgets, including MacBook Air, iPhone 5 and iPad Mini. He's
trying something similar with his online taxi-aggregation company , India's
largest.
In four years of its existence, Ola has expanded
to 100 cities with a fleet of more than 2 lakh cars, is adding ondemand bus
aggregation and a food and grocery delivery service, and is working on new
initiatives including carpooling and logistics.
“Since inception five years ago, we have grown
by leaps and bounds, now present in over a 100 cities, impacting mobility of
millions everyday,“ Aggarwal said. “While in the typical sense of the word, we have
gone beyond being a startup, we are happy to accept the privilege of being
nominated as the Startup of the Year in this first of its kind initiative by
the Economic Times.“ Ola is seeded in a typical startup story . Aggarwal's
parents thought he had gone crazy when he told them he was set to try his hand
at running a taxi business. But he has scaled the business like no other
startup in the past six months, despite running into a few regulatory hiccups.
In just a few months after incorporating Ola in
Mumbai in April 2011, Aggarwal and cofounder Ankit Bhati, both alumni of the
IIT-Bombay , raised funds from Snapdeal cofounder and CEO Kunal Bahl and angel
investors Rehan Yar Khan and Anupam Mittal. There has been no looking back
since.
Aggarwal's ambition is to change how India
travels and revolutionise personal transportation in the country .“All of us
have an entrepreneur in us,“ Aggarwal said in an earlier interview with ET.
“Few take the leap, doubting whether they will
make it. But you'll never know unless you take the big step.“
Ola, now headquartered in Bengaluru, is now
among India's most valuable Internet startups--at $2.5 billion-and counts
Japan's richest man, Masayoshi Son of SoftBank Group, and Russian billionaire
Yuri Milner as investors. Tata group Emeritus Chairman Ratan Tata is an
adviser.
In India, Ola challenged and won against
incumbents such as Meru and far overtaken global giant Uber.This year, Ola
acquired smaller rival TaxiForSure for $200 million.
ET14AUG15
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