Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola

Aggarwal’s cab-hailing giant is in the doldrums, while his EV venture is off to a shaky
start. Insiders blame a toxic culture and a distrustful CEO who can’t let go.
Ola has a massive problem. It is called Bhavish Aggarwal.  On the one hand, the 36-
year-old co-founder and CEO of Ola and Ola Electric is one of India’s sharpest and
most ambitious young tech entrepreneurs, who has more energy than the Duracell
bunny and the uncanny ability to dream and execute mega projects. By all accounts, the
way he absorbs knowledge and learns things, his attention to detail is a sight to behold.
On the other hand, insiders also say he is distrustful, insists on signing off on the
smallest of details, can’t focus on one thing for too long and keeps moving from one
project to another.
Aggarwal pushes unrealistic deadlines on social media, creating hype and stalling,
giving the world the impression that things are much closer to completion than in reality.
At Ola’s office in Bengaluru, he breathes fire, breaks laptops, bashes his head in anger
and fires people if the same unrealistic deadlines are missed.
The launch of Ola Electric’s scooters is a case in point. An apology, several missed
deadlines—from the launch of the booking website to the rollout plan—and many tech
glitches later, the company finally got the scooters to different cities for test drives earlier
this month. And while both Aggarwal and the company celebrate every single test drive
and remain upbeat about the product and its delivery schedule, the two-wheeler
remains very much an unfinished product.

When the first bookings were made in September, the delivery timeline for the scooters
was October, which got pushed to November. Last week, Ola Electric pushed back the
delivery for its scooters to the second half of December, citing global chip and
electronics shortages. But this is a thin cover. The chip shortage is not new and has
affected a lot of industries for over a year now.
“The reality is that the scooters are not ready. They are probably 60% ready, which is a
huge feat, given the company started working on them sometime in March this year,”
says a former executive, asking not to be named. “But I don’t see the deliveries anytime
soon. The problem is that Bhavish wanted the deliveries yesterday. He is the kind of
man who thinks it is possible to have a child in one month by getting nine women
pregnant.”

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 1

 Another former executive concurs.
“Ola makes outlandish promises, and all the media houses lap them up without asking
questions. There is a FOMO that if they did a critical story, Bhavish would not talk to
them, not that he does it anyway,” says the second former executive, also requesting
anonymity. “Can you imagine creating the kind of hype that Ola created around the
electric scooter without even having a product? But Bhavish did it"
He didn’t just do it. The noise he created drew attention to the entire segment.
Awareness of other electric two-wheeler brands like Bengaluru-based Ather has
increased because of Ola. Not just that, it has forced legacy two-wheeler manufacturers
to take notice. If you haven’t seen the BET vs OATS debate yet, you must.
The numbers are huge—Ola says it got over 100,000 bookings in 24 hours during the
first reservation window back in July and clocked Rs 1,100 crore in pre-booking charges
in September, even before a single scooter rolled out of its factory near Chennai. At a
valuation of $5 billion, Ola Electric is India’s most valuable electric vehicle company
today, without much to show for it.

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 2

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 3
 That Ola Electric has been able to create such hype without a product is the genius of
Bhavish Aggarwal, and therein lies his companies’ biggest problem: How long can a
business as big as Ola run purely on hype? How far can Aggarwal go before people
start asking questions? Most importantly, what happens when the market figures out the
hype and the bull run is over?
We sent queries to Ola yesterday on its business lines, strategy and company culture
issues. This story will be updated with the company’s responses when they come in.

‘A treadmill’

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 4

 The Third Wave Coffee Roasters outlets in Bengaluru are the real incubators of Indian
startups. They are for Bengaluru entrepreneurs what Mumbai locals are for office-goers
in India’s financial capital. Barring the employees of the coffee chain, only two kinds of
people are seen at these outlets—entrepreneurs and journalists. Every day over
countless cups of coffee, hundreds of plans are made and shelved, and pivots are
executed on these tables. These tables are also privy to some of the darkest stories of
India’s startup capital.

So the apprehension of the former executive—the first one quoted above—at the choice
of our meeting place on a rainy November evening is natural. After all, people recognize
each other over masks here. Worse, such is the terror of the company and its CEO that
not many people talk about Ola, fewer yet speak about it in public. So he insists I don’t
record our conversation and take notes instead, as we look for a quiet corner to settle
down. We find one, and for the next hour, he talks about Ola.

“Bhavish is the biggest bottleneck,” says this executive, in a volume that is a few
notches lower than his normal. “Working with him is like running on a treadmill, 24×7.
You get exhausted, but you reach nowhere. Eventually, you leave.”
“There are no teams left to do the business. There have been so many issues with the
app for years, but there is no tech or product team to sort them,” he says. “As long as
Bhati was here, people were looking at the problems. At this point, anything goes.”
Ankit Bhati, Aggarwal’s batchmate from IIT Bombay, co-founded Ola and was chief
technology officer. According to media reports, he distanced himself from the company’s
day-to-day functioning in 2019, apparently unhappy with being sidelined from Ola
Electric. We wrote about this here.

After Bhati’s departure, Riddlr co-founder Brijraj Vaghani was supposed to be taking
over the engineering and product verticals as CTO for the mobility business, but then he
too left.

“The company has been without a CTO for nearly 18 months. How do you run a tech
company without a CTO?” asks the executive quoted above. “There is hardly anyone
left in the company who understands the product. If something goes kaput, there is
hardly anyone to fix it.”

If you have used the Ola app for booking a ride, you would have come across these
glitches yourself. Users have complained about general lagginess and crashes, location

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 5

 updates and occasionally phantom bookings, while drivers sometimes end up matched
with passengers who want to go the opposite direction. The complaints keep coming.

The electric scooter launch debacle was the latest in a long list of such issues. 
“Bhavish hired people, doubled their salaries and gave them an unrealistic timeline,”
says this executive. “People told him it wasn’t possible, but he wouldn’t listen. He fired
them instead. So the rest of them lied. That’s what has led to the launch debacle.”

As the 8 September deadline loomed and it became clearer that an announcement was
almost impossible because the website wasn’t ready, Ola Electric brought an engineer
from Ola Financial Services to fix the website overnight, which didn’t happen. “So the
next day, he was fired because Bhavish had to publish an apology,” recalls this
executive.

Still, the bigger problem isn’t the past but the future. A scooter will be delivered, just like
it was launched, despite multiple issues. “But most likely, it will be a shitty product which
can break down anytime,” he says.

So why the hurry, you may ask. First, because it is the nature of the CEO, and second,
because the cab business is no longer hot, and nothing else he has tried has worked so
far. It is evident in Ola’s valuation, which has been stuck in the $6 billion range for the
past two years. Ola Electric, an entity not owned by Ola, is now valued at $5 billion,
making it Aggarwal’s ride out.

One-trick pony?
“The cab-hailing business is finite. If you put together Ola and Uber, they are at, say,
100, and the market opportunity is about 120. So the headroom to grow in the core
business is not very high,” says the second executive quoted above. “You also have to
understand that Ola overtook Uber in India not because it was a better service, but
because of the problems Uber was facing in India.”

Since starting India operations in 2013, Uber grew at a breakneck speed, growing from
about 5% of the ride-sharing market in 2015 to nearly half of it sometime last year.
When it sold its food delivery vertical to Zomato in January 2020, everyone thought
Uber would double down on its core business in India. But then something changed.
India is still the sixth-largest market for Uber but the San Francisco-based company
seems to have dropped the ball on India, because a) the pandemic has hurt the

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 6

 business across the world, b) India is not moving fast enough for the company, and c) it
is more worried about its performance in the home market.

The pandemic has been unforgiving for the business. Ola’s operating revenue for the 12
months ended March 2021 fell more than 60% from a year ago to Rs980 crore. Ride-
hailing, which saw a drop of over 50%, still accounted for 90% of revenue. The food and
financial services businesses together accounted for just over Rs 65 crore. Losses
came down significantly too, mostly on the back of layoffs and reduced marketing
spend.

The numbers may have improved, but the most unfortunate part of cab-hailing apps is
that nobody in the world has turned a profit at scale purely on this one business. In
regulatory filings before its 2019 IPO, Uber had famously said that the company might
never be able to make money from its core taxi-hailing business.

So it is a matter of survival that Ola finds other businesses. It has tried multiple things
over the years: cabs, autos, two-wheelers, aggregation, manufacturing, food, finance,
the list goes on. But outside cab-hailing, nothing has scaled up well.

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 7

 Ola tried its hand at the food business twice. In 2015, it launched Ola Cafe, which was
shut down a year later. In December 2017, it acquired Delivery Hero’s 95% stake in
Foodpanda for nearly Rs 200 crore in an all-stock deal. It committed another $200
million (nearly Rs 1,200 crore) over time in Foodpanda. Foodpanda then bought
Holachef in October 2018. By May 2019, both were shelved due to heavy losses.

“So many of us told Bhavish not to get into the food business because it is a very high
burn business, but Bhavish said he was convinced and wanted to show the middle
finger to UberEats,” says a third former executive, also requesting anonymity. “The
hundreds of crores of rupees that went down the drain due to his whim was not

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 8

 Bhavish’s money. If I’d burn that kind of money in a public company, will I still have my
job?”
Cut to 2021, and nobody knows what is happening with Ola’s food vertical anymore. As
long as Pranay Jivrajka—another IIT Bombay graduate and a long-time associate of
Aggarwal—was there, there was a focus on building brands. After he left in March this
year, the business got stuck. In August, Ola brought in former Café Coffee Day CEO
Vinay Bhopatkar to lead the vertical, which was renamed Ola Delivery—Ola’s version of
Swiggy’s Instamart. It recently launched grocery deliveries in Bengaluru and Mumbai.

“Bhavish thinks brands are not going to stand out or make him money, so now they are
getting into deliveries,” says the second former executive. “Nobody knows what is
happening. If you don’t create visibility with the brands, how are people going to know
about it? Did you know Ola has a pizza brand?”

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 9

 Or take the financial services vertical. Around the time Ola got into the food business,
the digital payments space was also heating up. Ola acquired a 45.7% stake in
Mumbai-based digital wallet company ZipCash in 2015, renamed it Ola Financial
Services and even raised decent funding, valuing the company at over $200 million last
year. But since the departure of CEO Nitin Gupta last year, it has been leaderless and
directionless. Earlier this week, news agency PTI reported that Ola is going to invest up
to Rs 786.1 crore in Ola Financial Services.

“I don’t even know who is heading the vertical now. I don’t think Bhavish has any
interest left in the business,” says the second former executive. In November, the
company said it is looking to expand its insurance business internationally to support

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 10

 mobility services in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand markets. But there is hardly any
international business left to take notice of. When Ola launched in London last year, it
grew quickly to gain a 20-25% market share. Today, it accounts for less than 5% of the
market. Australia and New Zealand are no different.
“If you look outside India, Ola has ceded market share everywhere, be it London,
Australia or New Zealand. Uber has whooped their ass badly,” says the second former
executive. “At one time, they had over 30 employees in Australia. Currently, there are
less than five. In New Zealand, there is only one employee left. As things stand, there is
no international business to write home about.”

In between, there was the failed Nagpur experiment with commercial electric vehicles
and Ola Fleets. The latest bet is Ola Cars, a platform for buying and selling used cars.
“They are trying to build it heavily, but I don’t think it is doing well,” says the second
former executive. “Bhavish tweeted recently that the company has sold more than 1,000
cars through Ola Cars. But again, it is full of glitches."
There have been multiple complaints. People are not just complaining about the tech
issues but also the overall experience on the website. Some have even said that the
prices on Ola Cars are higher than other such platforms selling used cars.
Long story short, till the electric scooter business proves otherwise, Ola can safely be
called a one-hit pony. It has cracked exactly one business, and that too only in India.
Also, at a time when its only rival was retreating. But don’t let that reality ruin good
storytelling.
The problem with Ola—and, by extension, Bhavish Aggarwal—is that for all the efforts
and the genius of a maverick founder, they haven’t been able to create a second viable
business, a second pillar of growth, so far. It is worth reiterating here that none of these
businesses was easy. But given the kind of money the company raised and the talent it
attracted, this is the worst possible outcome. And there is one person ultimately
responsible.

Distrust, paranoia, abuse

Back in 2010, when Ola was starting, another company was setting milestones half a
world away. It would be fair to say that Ola co-founders didn’t know about Uber at the
time. But when the Silicon Valley-based company announced its plans to enter India in

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 11

 2013 and held backdoor talks with Ola investors, Aggarwal and Co. were put on high
alert. From then on, it was all about beating Uber at their own game in India.

“They were a bunch of hustlers from IIT Bombay. They did whatever it took to fight Uber
and get a bigger market share in 2016-17,” says the first former executive. “They did
that. Then the company became bigger and growth slowed. So Bhavish brought in
professionals to run the company. But it created a culture issue.”
The professional managers came with years of experience in well-structured
organizations. They came from companies where opinions mattered, dissent was
common and employees were encouraged to question leaders. Ola is the opposite.

Aggarwal is extremely ambitious and supremely paranoid. He wants to win at any cost.
Failure is like death. Dissent is frowned upon. At Ola, there is a perpetual sense of
urgency. Aggarwal wants everything done yesterday, which puts people under immense
pressure. People either leave or lie, bringing the entire system down.

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 12

 Over time, this toxic culture became common knowledge, but people still joined
because there was a real problem to solve and the salaries were out of this world.
“You don’t realize the extent of the problem till you land at Ola,” says the first former
executive. “Trying to reason with him is a long, tedious and almost always futile process.
It becomes frustrating. And then Bhavish loses it. It is like a switch that flips.”

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 13

 Shouting, cursing in public is common. If you can’t interest him with your presentation in
the first few minutes, Aggarwal moves on to the next person. If you can’t do it twice, you
become useless.
“It happened to the Australia team once. He went there for a meeting, didn’t like the
presentation and left for India. So he was in Australia for probably a few hours only,”
recalls the first former executive.

He gets out of meetings, shuts people down, asks people to get out or keeps them
waiting for hours on end. In-person meetings are called past midnight, people are kept
waiting and then Aggarwal cancels the meeting, asking them to come back early the
following day, the executive adds.
“He will call for a meeting at 7 am on a Sunday and arrive midday and cancel the
meeting,” says the third former executive. “He misses no opportunity to put this servant-
master relationship on record.”
For Aggarwal, his company is his to control. Famously, in 2016, he turned down a
billion-dollar investment from SoftBank because he didn’t want to be put in the same
position as Snapdeal, where SoftBank as an investor tried to push the struggling e-
commerce startup to sell to larger rival Flipkart. Not only did he decline the $1 billion
investment, he also changed the board’s composition to give himself unassailable
power over anyone else.

Things got progressively worse. 

Instead of easing into a visionary leadership position, leaving the day-to-day work to
professionals, especially now that the threat from the board was over and the company
was entering a growth phase, Aggarwal became even more autocratic.
“You have to understand, no one can approve a single hiring, a single product or
spending a single rupee other than Bhavish himself,” says the first former executive. “So
when senior people join and want to assert their authority to make changes, he shows
them their place. He shows them in no uncertain terms who is the boss.”
It is not that Aggarwal doesn’t realize this. He does, everyone agrees. But there is an
innate distrust and paranoia. And an inherent belief that it is his company, he started it
and brought it here. And he can do it all over again, without anyone’s help. He sees
dependence as a sign of weakness. He’d rather ask people to leave if he can’t whip
them into shape.

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 14

 “Whatever team is left is chafing with new ideas in unrealistic timelines,” says the first
former executive. “Bhavish makes plans and rejects. Because sometimes he also
doesn’t know what he wants or how things will pan out eventually. Everyone tries to
keep him in good humour.”
He has a habit of keeping things moving, creating new businesses, even at the cost of
spreading himself too thin. He loses interest as quickly, once he thinks a business or a
person has nothing more to offer. He likes the churn every eight or nine months. And
now he wants to go public. Word in startup circles was that Ola would file for an IPO in
October, but that didn’t happen.

Road to the public markets

Ola is reportedly looking to raise over $500 million in debt from US investors, joining the
likes of Byju’s and Oyo, who have also recently tapped this market for debt through
instruments known as “term loan B”. But the company still needs fresh equity capital
and an exit for long-time investors.
“They have to go for an IPO. There are no two ways around it,” says the third former
executive. “There is only so much liquidity available in the private markets.”
But the fundamentals of the company aren’t great. The core business is stagnating,
while the other businesses are in disarray. Electric vehicles are an entirely different
company, with Aggarwal as the primary owner-founder. To top it all, Ola has a massive
talent retention problem.
“Who cares about fundamentals? Paytm also got listed,” says the second former
executive. Ola, he says, is built on hype. The company will put any number in public and
people will lap it up without thinking twice. The fear of missing out will drive investors.
Nobody cares to check the substance of the claims. It is the same with exits and
appointments.
Every time a top-level executive leaves, some media outlet will break the news and then
it will get buried in the daily news cycle. A few days later, Ola will hire a bunch of people
and give that story to agencies, which, in turn, will be picked up by all media outlets.
One news item around exit is buried in 30 items about hiring.
“If you look at the exits and hirings in the last year or so, you will see this clear trend.
Bhavish and Co. know how to manipulate the media,” he says.

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 15

 But the real question is whether he can still make a company if he keeps losing people
the way Ola has been over the years. If you compare Ola with other startups that have
recently listed or the ones on their way to listing, you will find that these companies
largely have a core management team that has stuck around. With Ola, that is not the
case.
Others agree. They say it is either Aggarwal or Ola. Both can’t thrive together.
“To run a business, you need to take care of three types of people: the supplier, the
employees and the customer. You need to have all three sections, or at least two of
them, love you,” says the first former executive. “In Ola’s case, people in all these
sections hate the company. It is working because it has the money. The day Bhavish
can’t raise any more will be the end of them both.”

“And since he has the power over the board, he will either understand this and change
accordingly, or Aggarwal will run Ola to the ground.”

Bhavish Aggarwal is choking Ola 16