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Journalism of Courage
Bhavish Aggarwal, the CEO of Ola Cabs and founder of Ola Electric, has been making headlines with his recent statements that emphasise made-in-India tech solutions to challenge the dominance of big tech companies. The Indian tech entrepreneur has steadily become more vocal and often takes to social media to share his views on tech developments, particularly how they affect India.
With Ola Electric opening up its IPO for subscriptions, here’s a look at a few key remarks and announcements from Bhavish Aggarwal in the past few weeks that outline his long-term vision and strategic outlook of tech innovation.
As part of the IPO, the price band of each equity share of Ola Electric is set between Rs 72-Rs 76. The subscription period ends on Tuesday, August 6. The IPO pricing was lowered by 25 per cent from Ola Electric’s previous valuation of $5.4 billion.
“We are four-five years old and have scaled significantly. I wanted to make sure we price it attractively for the entire investor community in India. It’s a journey of significance for the country — we’re doing EVs, cells, India manufacturing, cutting-edge manufacturing. Hence, we represent a lot of themes that the future of the Indian economy is built on. The response from investors has been very encouraging,” Aggarwal was quoted as saying by Economic Times.
Assuming that the equity shares are issued at the upper limit of the IPO price (Rs 76), Bhavish Aggarwal could earn over Rs 288 crore as he is looking to offload 3,79,15,211 shares with a face value of Rs 10.
At the same press briefing that was held to discuss the IPO in Mumbai, Aggarwal said that the company is looking beyond manufacturing EV scooters and announced Ola’s first electric motorcycle. “We plan to launch our electric motorcycles within the first six months of next year,” Aggarwal said.
The CEO was also seen taking the bike on a trial spin in a short, two second clip posted on social media. Aside from the bike, other major announcements are expected to be made at Ola’s annual Sankalp event on August 15.
Aggarwal has also laid out the EV maker’s strategy in order to maintain its leading market position. “Earlier, the incumbents were thinking EVs were not relevant. Now they are coming into this industry as they have understood that EV is the future,” he said at a press conference.
“The winning strategy in EVs is going to be the company which will be able to build future technologies as well as create a manufacturing ecosystem– which is different for EVs than the ICEs. And this is where we have got our story,” he added.
When Aggarwal announced in July that Ola was exiting Google Maps in favour of its in-house Ola Maps, it kicked off a battle for dominance of India’s mapping industry. Shortly after Ola’s exit, Google Maps reduced its API prices for Indian developers using its platform and said that it would start accepting payments in INR.
In response, Aggarwal wrote a blog post in which he said, “For years, global big tech giants have viewed India primarily as a market to tap. They’ve imposed high costs on our developers, collected our data, and often overlooked our digital sovereignty.”
“It’s surprising that even now, some tech giants hesitate to fully localize their pricing in India. Offering payment in ₹ should be standard, not exceptional. This disconnect from local realities underscores why India needs homegrown tech leaders,” he added.
However, Aggarwal’s campaign urging developers to exit Google Maps was weakened after allegations were levelled against Ola by MapMyIndia, another Indian mapping startup, of data infringement. “You have duplicated our client’s API (application programming interface) and SDKs (software development kits) from proprietary sources belonging to our client to build OLA Maps. It is firmly stated that our client’s exclusive data has been copied/derived by you to further your illegal motive and for your unjust commercial gains,” CE Info Systems, the parent company of MapMyIndia, said in a legal notice.
Aggarwal reportedly responded by calling MapMyIndia’s legal notice “opportunistic”.
In another blog post published in July, Aggarwal detailed his views on what it would take to transform India into a $50 trillion economy by 2047. He pointed out that despite digitisation, India’s compute penetration remains low compared to other countries.
“The only way forward for India is to build the world’s largest AI industry. This ambitious goal can have a dual impact: creating jobs of the future and turbocharging economic growth, while allowing us to infuse our cultural ethos into how AI is built and deployed globally,” he said.
Advocating for a push in renewable energy generation and battery storage production capacity, the post said, “Currently, 90% of the new energy ecosystem – from solar production, lithium cell production & mid-stream processing to EV manufacturing – is concentrated in China. However, this global transition is just beginning, and the world needs an alternative. By doubling down on this ecosystem and building our own technologies and supply chains in India, we can not only make our economy more energy-efficient but also create upstream manufacturing and supply chain ecosystems.”
