Bhavish Aggarwal is one of the leading faces of entrepreneurship in the modern Indian startup ecosystem. From an IIT Bombay graduate to becoming the CEO and co-founder of India’s most popular cab aggregator, OlaCabs, his story is nothing short of a revelation to young entrepreneurs throughout the world.
Bhavish Aggarwal was born on 28 August 1985 and brought up in Ludhiana, Punjab. He completed a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2008. While still studying at IIT B, he served as a research intern at Microsoft Research India for three months in 2007. Following graduation, he joined Microsoft as Assistant Researcher in July 2008. During his two-year stint with Microsoft, Bhavish managed to file two patents and also got three papers published in international journals.
Life as an entrepreneur
You may not always end up where you thought you were going, but you will always end up where you were meant to be. From a very young age, Bhavish knew that he wanted to become an entrepreneur. Unable to suppress his entrepreneurial passion any longer, he quit Microsoft. Soon after, he started an online company which dealt with the sale of short duration tours and holidays online. During this time, once when he was traveling from Bengaluru to Bandipur, the driver of his cab stranded him in the middle of nowhere over a failed negotiation deal. This proved to be a watershed moment for him.
After a decent amount of research, he realised that this was a genuine and deep-rooted problem for the masses. A lot of customers had fallen prey to such situations and were desperately in need of a quality cab service. For the first time, Bhavish could envision the amount of potential a cab service startup had. He decided to establish a cab aggregator company with great customer experience and economical prices. Teaming up with Ankit Bhati, another IITian from Jodhpur, he set up the website Olatrips.com on December 3, 2010, in Mumbai allowing potential customers to book cars for outstation trips. He believed, “Anyone can build their own business and anyone can have a good business plan but they need the best strategic planning and the right type of execution. Always a zero inventory will be a good startup if people can execute it the right way.” They did not have much working capital and also lacked the backing of any investors, they had to make do with their ‘shoestrings savings.’
By 2012, they were offering on-demand rides to customers via phone calls. Soon after launching the smartphone app, they received a $5 million investment from Tiger Global Management. Even without any prior business experience, Bhavish managed to secure funding from Rehan Yar Khar, Anupam Mittal, and Snapdeal’s Kunal Bahl. The company was two years old when it received additional funding from Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital and Japan’s SoftBank, which helped it command 60% of the market share in India by 2014.
The ‘Ola Mini’ service was soon launched in Bangalore & consecutively in Delhi (NCR). Ola also expanded to incorporate autos and launched “cashless rides” which not only worked with the cabs on their network, but was extended to ‘Auto rickshaws and Kaali-Peeli taxis’ as well. The company which made 10 bookings per day in 2011 was now hosting 15 lakh bookings daily. Operations were extended overseas starting with Australia in January 2018, followed by New Zealand in September that year and the UK in March 2019.
Ola transitioned from a mere vision of two young IIT grads to a company providing a livelihood to thousands of people and a part of millions of people’s everyday lives in many cities. The company, which is valued at about $10 billion today, was named ‘Startup of the Year’ in 2015 by The Economic Times and received the ‘Leadership Award for Outstanding Startup’ from Forbes India. Bhavish Aggarwal was listed among ’30 under 30′ by Hindustan Times and Forbes.
Bhavish’s success story is a product of grit and perseverance. Today, he is an inspiration to the young entrepreneurs of this country. In his own words, “All of us have an entrepreneur in us. Entrepreneurs are not driven by fear; they are driven by the idea to create an impact.”
References:
https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/bhavish-aggarwal-50839.php
https://www.yosuccess.com/success-stories/bhavish-aggarwal-olacabs/
Entrepreneurship Development Cell 
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