Bhavish Aggarwal (born 28 August 1985) is an Indian entrepreneur and co-founder of

Ola Cabs Ola Cabs (stylized as OLΛ) is an Indian multinational ridesharing company, headquartered in Bangalore. It also operates in other business verticals including financial services and cloud kitchens. A variety of venture capitalists includin ...

and Ola Electric. Aggarwal was included in ''Time'' magazine's ''100 Most Influential People of 2018.''

Early life

Aggarwal was born and brought up in

Ludhiana Ludhiana ( ) is the most populous and the largest city in the Indian state of Punjab. The city has an estimated population of 1,618,879 2011 census and distributed over , making Ludhiana the most densely populated urban centre in the state. ...

city, Punjab, in a

Punjabi Hindu Punjabi Hindus are adherents of Hinduism who identify linguistically, culturally, and genealogically as Punjabis. While Punjabi Hindus are mostly found in the Indian state of Punjab today, many have ancestry from the greater Punjab regi ...

family. He completed a bachelor's degree in computer science and engineering at

Indian Institute of Technology Bombay The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay or IITB) is a public research university and technical institute in Powai, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. It is considered as one of the best engineering universities in India and is top ranke ...

in 2008. He started his career with

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

Research India as a Research Intern and later got reinstated as an Assistant Researcher.

Career

He began his career with

, where he worked for two years, filed two patents and published three papers in international journals. In January 2011 he co-founded Ola Cabs with Ankit Bhati in Bengaluru.

Ola Cabs

The idea for a cab company struck Aggarwal when he had a bad experience with a taxi, which led him and Ankit Bhati to co-found

in 2010.

has become the largest network of personal transportation options within India and has emerged as the most popular choice for many consumers in 22 Indian cities. In May 2020,

announced a huge layoff of around 5000 employees in a move to survive the economic repercussions of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quickl ...

. It had suffered an overwhelming loss of revenue by about 95%. In a webinar addressed to the students of Bennet University, Bhavish said that the

pandemic was about to accelerate the innovations in technologies. He claimed that the markets might move towards more car rentals and subscription-based ownerships of cars. In April 2022, An internal email to Ola employees was sent out, announcing that Bhavish Aggarwal would be stepping down from day-to-day operations of the company to focus on the future of Ola’s venture into electric vehicles and quick-commerce.

Awards

* ET Awards, Richest of the year, 2017

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aggarwal, Bhavish Businesspeople from Ludhiana 1985 births Living people Ola Cabs IIT Bombay alumni Punjabi people Marwari people