We all definitely would have used Ola Cabs, but do we
know who is the founder is? How it all started? So let’s introduce Bhavish
Aggarwal, the man behind Ola Cabs. Bhavish Aggarwal is an alumnus of IIT Bombay
and holds the degree of B.Tech in Computer Science.
A weekend trip to Bandipur turned out to be disaster for
Bhavish and his friends, this happened when he booked a rented car for a
weekend trip to Bandipur but on the way to Bandipur, the cab driver demanded
more fare to travel ahead to Bandipur from Mysore, when Bhavish and his friends
decided not to pay the driver the extra fare and continued their journey by
bus. This pathetic experience made Bhavish Aggarwal to provide better solution
to customers looking for rental cabs.
Bhavish Aggarwal thought of providing convenience,
maintaining price transparency and standardizing the cab booking process so
with this idea, he started Ola cabs on 3 December 2010. He started Ola cabs by
having tie-up with car operators, where he charged the commission for the sales
carried and also a nominal fee for using Ola technology platform. This was
purely “Pay-for-Performance” model i.e. you pay only for the distance you ride
but not more than that.
That was the time when Indian Transportation Industry was
inefficient and unorganized. It was identified that the Indian radio taxi
market is estimated to be around $6-$9 billion dollars and it is projected to
grow by 17 – 20% every year. But the fact was only 4 – 6% of radio taxi market
is organized. There was no proper service provided to the customer. Price
transparency was the main problem faced by many customers as different
operators offered different price bands. This was seen as unseen opportunity by
Bhavish Aggarwal and he tapped into the market by standardizing the cab booking
charges with the help of technology that can connect to the people at larger
and faster ways.
Initially
they targeted the corporate professionals, who were eagerly looking for weekend
break with their friends and colleagues. The target positioning was a perfect
pitch and they could see the raise in demand for their business model in Mumbai
and this made them to expand their business to Pune, Bangalore and Delhi.
Today
Bhavish Aggarwal is considered to be the youngest & richest entrepreneur in
India with the estimate of Rs. 2,385 crore.
