INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

OLACABS - INDIA
BM019-3-3-ENTRE
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
NP3F1809IT
RANJIT SHRESTHA (NP000090)

HAND OUT DATE: 23 May 2019

HAND IN DATE: 12 August 2019

WEIGHTAGE: 60%

_______________________________________________________________________

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES:

1. Submit your assignment at the administrative counter.

2. Students are advised to underpin their answers with the use of references
(Cited using the Harvard Name System of referencing).

3. Late submissions will be awarded zero (0) unless extenuating Circumstances

(EC) are upheld.

4. Cases of plagiarism will be penalized.

5. The assignment should be bound in an appropriate style (comb bound or

stapled)

6. Where the assignment should be submitted in both hard copy and softcopy,
the softcopy of the written assignment and source code (where appropriate)
should be on a CD in an envelope/ CD cover and attached to the hardcopy.

7. You must obtain 50% overall to pass this module.

OLACABS - INDIA

Presented By

Ranjit Shrestha (NP000090)

Acknowledgement
On the very outset of this report, I would like to extend our sincere & heartfelt obligation
towards all the personages who have helped us in this endeavor. Without their active
guidance, help, cooperation & encouragement, we would not have made headway in the
project.

I am ineffably indebted to Lecturer Mr. Saurav Satyal Sir, for conscientious guidance and
encouragement to accomplish this assignment.

I extend our gratitude to Lord Buddha Education Foundation for giving us this opportunity.
We also acknowledge with a deep sense of reverence, our gratitude towards our parents
and member of our family, who has always supported us morally as well as economically.

At finally gratitude goes to Friends who Cooperated, listened, understood and helped each
other to complete this project report. It has been honored to work with you all. Thank You,

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Table of Contents
Acknowledgement ................................................................................................................ i

1 Introduction of Company .................................................................................................. 1

2 Company and entrepreneur ............................................................................................... 1

2.1 Background of the company ...................................................................................... 1

2.2 Background of Founders and Co-Founders ............................................................... 3

2.3 Source of idea for the existence of OlaCabs .............................................................. 4

2.4 Legal form of OlaCabs............................................................................................... 4

2.4.1 Ownership structure of OlaCabs ......................................................................... 5

2.4.2 Setup Holding Company Structure ..................................................................... 5

2.5 Opportunities of OlaCabs .......................................................................................... 6

2.5.1 Cover wider Market ............................................................................................ 6

2.5.2 Growing internet penetration and smartphone users .......................................... 6

2.5.3 Unorganized market hold .................................................................................... 6

2.5.4 Emerging disposable Market .............................................................................. 6

2.5.5 Huge demand of convenient services ................................................................. 6

2.5.6 Acquiring company for lucrative business ......................................................... 7

2.6 Resources and grow the Business .............................................................................. 7

2.7 The challenges faced by OlaCabs .............................................................................. 8

3 Recommend for continuously be successful ..................................................................... 8

4 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 9

5 References ....................................................................................................................... 10

6 Plagiarism Report............................................................................................................ 12

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List of Figures:

Figure 1: Timeline Achievement of Ola Cabs ..................................................................... 1

Figure 2: OLA's Business Model ......................................................................................... 3
Figure 3: Ownership structure of OlaCabs .......................................................................... 5

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BM019-3-3-ENTRE Individual Assignment OlaCabs-India

1 Introduction of Company
Olacabs is the fastest growing unicorn company founded in 2011, Headquarter
situated in Mumbai and Bangalore, India that integrated city transportation by Bhavish
Aggarwal (co-founder, CEO) and Ankit Bhati (co-founder, CTO). It is also known as the
world’s largest ride-sharing companies that facilitate good user’s experience by using
mobile technology. In 2016, it remains the world’s first connected car platform for a ride-
sharing company that provides service in four countries such as India, Australia, United
Kingdom, and New Zealand. It offers city taxi, outstation, and rentals services with
varieties of choosing like bike, car, sharable car, micro, mini, auto, luxury car, e-rickshaw,
etc. it has 9,00,000 vehicles serving customers every day, a million driver-partners, 110
plus own fleets and more than 6000 employees. Moreover, it enables its partner like Apple
Music, Sony Liv, and Microsoft between others, to build productive user experience and
high-quality services (Olacabs, 2019).

It is more focus on technology, and user experiences such as mobile app, 24/7
customer support, customer safety, and security (Olacabs, 2019). It emphases new
technology to improve its service as well as it also facilitates crucial features that stand for
user experience like:

 Getting a car in under five minutes.

 Getting into a car which is clean and the driver is courteous.
 Being able to pay very seamlessly for the ride.

2 Company and entrepreneur

2.1 Background of the company
The following timeline chart is demonstrated the achievement of Ola Cabs:

Figure 1: Timeline Achievement of Ola Cabs

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BM019-3-3-ENTRE Individual Assignment OlaCabs-India

Source: (Dr. Ashok Kumar Panigrahi, 2018)

In the above timeline chart, Ola cab was founded in 2010 in Mumbai by Bhavish
Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati. In initial time OlaCabs struggling to establish in city taxi
aggregation market due to investing INR 2-3 lakhs. OlaCabs faced the challenge of
fundraising and getting angle investors (CNBC-TV18, 2018). In 2013, OlaCabs raised
undisclosed amount in Series B funding from Tiger Global and Matrix Partners (Chatterjee,
2019).

In 2014, OlaCabs acquired competitor “Taxi-ForSure” in approximately $ 200

million in Bengalure city (Aditi Shrivastava, 2015). OlaCabs raised $ 40.8 Million in
Series C funding from Steadview in June 2014. OlaCabs also raised $ 210 Million for
Series D funding led by Softbank in October 2014. OlaCabs incorporate autos in Trail
basis in Bangalore in November 2014 and initiated auto services in Delhi, Pune and
Chennai in December 2014.

In 2015, OlaCabs began auto-rickshaw service in Chandigarh, Jaipur, and Indore.

In this year, OlaCabs achieved $ 5 Billion market. Ola also launched two-wheeler vehicle
services for the trial venture in Bengaluru in 2016. The movement of expansion went to
diversification by acquiring FoodPanda Company. It doesn’t stop to extend from country-
boundary. It expands their city taxi business into Australia and New Zealand in 2018.

In 2019, the extent of OlaCabs goes to the United Kingdom. Currently, Ola is
rapidly growing and leading company in taxi aggregation industry (Dr. Ashok Kumar
Panigrahi, 2018). OlaCabs initiates $ 2 Billion funding round by collecting funding $ 74
Million from Steadview Capital and $ 92 Million by Sachin Bansal respectively in January
and February 2019 (Chatterjee, 2019).

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BM019-3-3-ENTRE Individual Assignment OlaCabs-India

Figure 2: OLA's Business Model (Chatterjee, 2019)

Source: Future Work Technologies

2.2 Background of Founders and Co-Founders

There are two partners to establish the OlaCabs Company. Partners assigned their
roles and responsibility as Co-Founder of OlaCabs. The following are the background of
Co-Founders of OlaCabs in details as below:

Bhavish Aggarwal is the CEO and Co-Founder of OlaCabs. He is a renewed

entrepreneur in India for city taxi transportation industry. He began OlaCabs with his friend
Ankit Bhati, they are an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai.
He finished B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT in 2008. After college, he worked for
Microsoft Research in Bangalore for 2 years and published three academic journal papers
as well as filing 2 patents (StartupTalky, 2019).

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BM019-3-3-ENTRE Individual Assignment OlaCabs-India

Ankit Bhati is the CTO and Co-Founder of OlaCabs. He is responsible for

technological part OlaCabs and also known as a hard-working person in coding. He always
focuses on how to improve and innovate the mobile app to achieve better performance.
Before Ola, He completed M.Tech from IIT in 2009. After college, he worked at different
freelance projects and startups (Olacabs, 2019).

2.3 Source of idea for the existence of OlaCabs

The idea often comes from facing a problem, similarly, when Bhavish Aggarwal
ran his Olatrip.com startup for six months, he faced a lot of problems to attract the
customers. Some portion of the idea comes from the customer for demanding taxi rent while
dealing with customers. After that one day, he planned to travel Bangalore to Bandipur for
a holiday trip and he rented out a taxi for a long-distance trip by negotiating the fare. At the
middle of the journey, the driver again negotiates about fare with him intend to get extra
money. They are discussed aggressively and he decided to pay no extra money after that
driver leaves him in the middle of the journey. That problem is triggered out to him for
ideas about taxi rent. He thought this problem is faced by every person who travels in a
taxi. To eliminate this problem, he got an idea OlaCabs for better customer experience with
reasonable price (Tijartee, 2019).

Afterward, he started city taxi aggregation as an OlaCabs.com with a partnership

of Ankit Bhati at 3 December 2010. They are lunched OlaCabs mobile as well website
application for provides cab booking service by regulating ANI Technology Pvt. Ltd
(Letsintern, 2014).

2.4 Legal form of OlaCabs

Every company should have a legal form to operate a business in national and
international. The legal form defines the structure of a company to run business adhere to
government regulation of business. While starting a business we choose either a sole
proprietorship, a partnership, a limited liability company (LLC) or a corporation and
cooperatives in order to operate Business Company (Inc., 2000).

According to the legal form of OlaCabs, it started as a partnership firm with his best
friend Ankit Bhati due to lack of investment. Partnership legal form is simple and
inexpensive to start and operate the business. In partnership, partners share their profit and
loss.

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BM019-3-3-ENTRE Individual Assignment OlaCabs-India

2.4.1 Ownership structure of OlaCabs

According to data from VCCEdge which is a research platform of VCCircle, the data
show that the ownership structure of Ola as below:

Figure 3: Ownership structure of OlaCabs

At 31 march 2015, OlaCab published the actual owners of the company. Based on
the data highest shareholder companies are Japan’s SoftBank Group and 20.35 % Tiger
Global, 20.6% other domestic shareholder and founder hold merely 11.95% similarly,
Matrix Partners holding 11.45%, DST Global holding 8.4%, Accel Partners holding 2.81%
and Helion Venture Partners hold 1.93% of OlaCab share (Pitchaih, 2016).

2.4.2 Setup Holding Company Structure

Ola is a rapidly growing company in taxi aggregation industry. Expansion of Ola is
extremely huge, now Ola is no longer stay the same business. It expands diversification
business such as food delivery service as FoodPanda app and Electric Vehicles (EV)
Business Unit. Ola is becoming a holding company that acquires a variety of Business

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BM019-3-3-ENTRE Individual Assignment OlaCabs-India

Company. Now Ola can manage and control different companies like FoodPanda
(Chaudhary, 2018).

2.5 Opportunities of OlaCabs

2.5.1 Cover wider Market
OlaCabs has a great opportunity to extend their business by adding a segment of non-
technical customers. Ola is rebuilding its business model to provide service to these
customers by adding new technological advancement like Artificial Intelligent, Machine
learning, etc. it also covers the low-level customers who have 2G or 3G mobile phone by
offering lightweight OlaCabs mobile app.

2.5.2 Growing internet penetration and smartphone users

India Government committed to building smart cities by providing free internet service.
Yet most of the public place had free WIFI zone like Metro station. Moreover, customers
can also take initiatives from the free package of the internet of Internet Service Provider
(ISP) or SIM providers such as JIO and Airtel. Ola also can take benefits for them and
attract more smartphone user to link the OlaCab.

2.5.3 Unorganized market hold

Ola has a huge potential of expansion in the unorganized market that holding 85% of the
segment due to the transportation of poor government. India Government provides fewer
facilities of transport in tire 2 and 3 cities such as Lucknow, Bhopal, Patna, etc. It’s a great
time to start a business in a remote area and solve the problem of customers. Where the
problem there is a solution (Bhasin, 2019).

2.5.4 Emerging disposable Market

Every person is ready to use disposable product and service rather than buy and maintain
their product if they get a reasonable price. Each person or organization has been struggling
to survive in this modern era due to having a lot of works to sustain. So, people and
organization are don’t take a risk to buy fixed asset product and do maintenance. For
instance, customers take a rental car rather than buying a car. Similarly, the organization
take cloud services rather than buying and deploying the data center.

2.5.5 Huge demand of convenient services

Nowadays, customers are willing to pay money in every convenient products and services.
There are some influence factors ready to pay money by customers like, time saving,

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BM019-3-3-ENTRE Individual Assignment OlaCabs-India

laziness, and hobby to use new product and services etc. so that these things are growing
rapidly and demanding convenient service in every market. OlaCabs also have opportunity
to grab this demand by utilizing their resources.

2.5.6 Acquiring company for lucrative business

Now, Ola is about $ 6.2 billion Valuation Company. So, for enhancing the lucrative
business, Ola can acquire small companies which have the potential to grow in the future.
The lucrative business helps make a profit from the company and expand the diversify
business. The market is diversification so, Ola has the opportunity to invest their money
into diversifying business such as education, hotel, sport, etc.

2.6 Resources and grow the Business

The resource of OlaCabs in an initial phase is a disruptive idea, technically skilled
manpower, and a small amount of capital. Bhavish has completed B.Tech in Computer
Science and had 2 years working experience in Microsoft research. Bhavish also has 6
months working experience of the startup Olatrip.com. That’s why he is willing to execute
this idea with his friend. Ankit Bhati has completed dual degree M.Tech and B.Tech and
also has working experience in different startup companies as a freelancer. Overall, they
have strong technical skills to execute this idea. They had only ₹ 2-3 lakhs (CNBC-TV18,
2018)as capital money collected from their saving salaries. They didn’t get any investment
from any investors. They started OlaCabs by utilizing the main two resource from Mumbai.
Renting a home and set up some tables and laptops start developing their website and
mobile app. They were struggling to survive in the taxi aggregators business.

At 2014, they got an angle investors Tiger Globe Company after that they didn’t
look back. They expanded their business in Bangalore and other cities. They are the main
focus on the technology part to develop a mobile app for convenient service. They also
high maintain the user experience such as customer safety and payment transparency. The
business model of OlaCabs is provided with a platform that easily connects the customers
and taxi drivers. OlaCabs executed different business strategies to operate with the taxi
drivers such as Vehicle policy, initiative policy, bonus, etc. for customers OlaCabs
committed maintain the standard of the better user experience. In these business strategies,
OlaCabs rapidly grow its business.

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BM019-3-3-ENTRE Individual Assignment OlaCabs-India

2.7 The challenges faced by OlaCabs

The biggest challenged faced by OlaCabs is fundraising at the initial phase. Bhavish
and Ankit are a technical person. They don’t have the business knowledge to explain their
angle investors. So they were struggled to find investment because OlaCabs need a lot of
investment to grow up in the market. At the meeting of fundraising, one of angle investor
said about OCA Structure that time Bhavish didn’t know about this term so that Ola was
struggling in fundraising in the early stage (CNBC-TV18, 2018).

Another challenge was to develop a website and mobile app for providing
convenient taxi booking service because Ola should develop three application such as
website app, android app, and iOS app. There were also offers a better feature of online
taxi booking experience. Thus Ola faced a lot of problems while developing its application.

3 Recommend for continuously be successful

A successful business is becoming from penetrating the different layers of factors
that directly and indirectly affect the business. The affecting factors are internal and
external such as can be, organizational structure, HR, market, economic, technology, and
Government policy, etc. So, Ola should keep the eyes closed on business environment
factors and grow business by providing customers demand.

Indian Government planned to build vehicle policy as every person should use an
electric vehicle to control the pollution. So, Ola should focus on its EV Business Unit which
is acquired by Ola. Ola should invest Research and Development (R&D) department of
EV. If Ola can build the electric vehicle in comfortable in this weather then Ola is cover
the overall Indian market. Either Ola should make a plan about alternative ideas to eliminate
the risk of upcoming electric vehicles.

Ola also should concern with competitors, as well as new advance technology.
Before adopting new technology from competitors, Ola should implement advanced
technology and provide a convenient service to customers.

Ola should up to date about the economic condition as well as market analysis.
What is the economic condition of the country and how it affects the OlaCabs? And what
is marketing going on? To analysis these factors to prevent potential risks.

Ola should also consider the recession of business. Before going to critical stage
Ola should analyze things that affected the business at the early phase of recession.
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Now, Innovation is major concern aspect of every business. Most of the companies
implemented R&D department for innovating products and services. Ola should take a
problem-solving solution from market analysis and workout that idea to innovate new
services for customers.

4 Conclusion
OlaCabs is a radical innovation in taxi aggregators industries in India. It is a
platform of mobile application to connect the customers and taxi drivers. It is fulfilling
customers and taxi driver’s problems. The business model of Ola is to satisfy the taxi
drivers and creating brand value from customers by providing standard customer
experience. The first market strategy is mouth to mouth strategy implemented by Ola. At
the early phase, Ola faced fundraising and technical problem. Later, Ola made the mark on
its business industry and got a lot of investment. Ola expands diversification business. Now
Ola is Unicorn Company in India. The success behind the Ola is a disruptive idea, a great
business model, having a technically skilled partnership and strong desire of entrepreneurs.

Bhavish gave one strong quote for every upcoming entrepreneur to become
successful is “There is no best time for startup, the right time is when you feel to start
something and create a big business.”

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BM019-3-3-ENTRE Individual Assignment OlaCabs-India

5 References
Aditi Shrivastava, E. B., 2015. Olacabs to buy TaxiForSure to take on competitors like
Uber; deal likely at Rs 1,250 crore. [Online]
Available at: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/olacabs-to-buy-
taxiforsure-to-take-on-competitors-like-uber-deal-likely-at-rs-1250-
crore/articleshow/46048014.cms
[Accessed 26 06 2019].

Bhasin, H., 2019. SWOT analysis of Ola cabs. [Online]

Available at: https://www.marketing91.com/swot-analysis-ola-cab/
[Accessed 03 07 2019].

Chaudhary, S., 2018. Ola To Setup Holding Company Structure That Will Own Ola Cabs,
Foodpanda and EV business Unit. [Online]
Available at: https://www.indianweb2.com/2018/05/28/ola-to-setup-holding-company-
structure-that-will-own-ola-cabs-foodpanda-and-ev-business-unit/
[Accessed 02 07 2019].

CNBC-TV18, 2018. The OLA Startup Story || Bhavish Aggarwal Interview || Ola Cabs
CEO || CNBC TV18. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRUz3QVThWw
[Accessed 26 06 2019].

Dr. Ashok Kumar Panigrahi, S. S. A. R., 2018. Success Story of a Start-up – A Case
Study of OLA Cabs. IOSR Journal of Business and Management (IOSR-JBM) , 20(2), pp.
30-37 .

Inc., 2000. Which Legal Form Is Best for Your Business?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.inc.com/articles/2000/06/19438.html
[Accessed 01 07 2019].

Letsintern, 2014. The OlaCabs Story | Meet the founders, how they started out, and what
they look for in employees.. [Online]
Available at: https://www.letsintern.com/blog/the-olacabs-story/
[Accessed 29 06 2019].

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Olacabs, 2019. Abount Us. [Online]

Available at: https://www.olacabs.com/about.html
[Accessed 15 6 2019].

Olacabs, 2019. Who we are. [Online]

Available at: https://www.olacabs.com/about.html
[Accessed 27 06 2019].

Pitchaih, V., 2016. https://www.techcircle.in/2016/06/30/how-indian-is-olas-ownership-

structure. [Online]
Available at: https://www.techcircle.in/2016/06/30/how-indian-is-olas-ownership-
structure
[Accessed 02 07 2019].

StartupTalky, 2019. OLA - Competing World's Most Valued Startup from India. [Online]
Available at: https://startuptalky.com/startup-story-ola/#ola_owner_founder_ceo_team
[Accessed 27 06 2019].

Tijartee, 2019. Bhavish Aggarwal | founder of Olacab | success story of OLA. [Online]
Available at: https://www.tijartee.com/the-success-story-of-ola-founder-bhawish-
aggarwal/
[Accessed 28 06 2019].

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6 Plagiarism Report

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Evaluation criteria and marks allocation

Criteria no. Item Weightage Obtained

1 Subject Knowledge and 40

Understanding

2 Analysis and Evaluation 40

3 Report layout, language and clarity 10

4 Referencing 5

5 Turnitin 5

Total 60

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