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Bhavish Aggarwal's Ola companies to be restructured into a conglomerate: Report
Bhavish Aggarwal holds nearly a 9% stake in Ola Consumer, 36% in the now publicly listed Ola Electric, and around 90% in Ola Krutrim
Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal is planning to restructure his companies into a conglomerate structure ahead of the Ola Consumer IPO, according to an Economic Times report.
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At the moment Ola Consumer (Ola Cabs), the now publicly listed Ola Electric, and AI-startup Krutrim are associate companies, but not subsidiaries under one holding company, with Aggarwal holding nearly a 9%, 36%, and 90% stake in them respectively, according to the report.
The restructuring will involve the formation of a leadership group, deployment of shared technology assets and overall control by BA Family Office, the report read.
The restructure of the companies will start off with Ola Maps, which was in the spotlight last year due to MapMyIndia alleging data theft by Ola.
Ola Maps is planned to come under Krutrim despite the data for running it coming mainly from the 14-year-old cab-hailing side, which acquired Geospoc Geospatial Services in October 2021.
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Krutrim cites OpenStreetMap, the government, and Ola entities as its data sources for building maps, according to the report.
Aggarwal also has ambitious plans for Krutrim such as building AI chips, AI-driven maps and LLMs (large language models). He plans to meet the large capital requirements for this through his family office.
Krutrim may also likely have a number of offshoots or subsidiaries.
When it comes to Ola Consumer, it has more than 100 investors including Softbank, Temasek, Warburg Pincus, Steadview Capital, Tiger Global, DST Global, and Falcon Edge Capital.
Many of them are pushing Aggarwal for an exit from their investments which are now 6-10 years old, according to the report.
Going public is one the ways that can be done, with Aggarwal trying to do so since 2020. The latest plan is to do it this year.
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However, this also comes at a time when Ola Consumer is facing tough competition, with Uber currently leading the car taxi category, and Rapido catching up in third place.
Because of this, Aggarwal is pushing for a deeper partnership with ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce) as part of a diversification drive and is also expanding its delivery fleet for the platform.
