In the summer of 2021, Bhavish Aggarwal was arguably India’s most audacious tech entrepreneur.
Ola Cabs (now Ola Consumer), the ride-hailing behemoth he had founded along with a fellow IIT Bombay engineer Ankit Bhati in 2010, commanded a healthy market share in India’s ride-hailing sector.
Backed by SoftBank, Tiger Global and Temasek, it raised $139 Mn at a valuation of $7.3 Bn in late 2021, perhaps the last major round in what was the peak year of funding for Indian startups.
And that’s before the big push with Ola Electric that followed in the next few years. Aggarwal was somewhere near his peak as an entrepreneur in 2020 and 2021.
What has followed over the next five years is a cautionary tale.
On June 3, 2026, Vanguard, one of the world’s largest asset managers and an early Ola Cabs investor marked down the value of its investment, and valued the company at just $70 Mn. From the $7.3 Bn peak, Ola’s valuation has seen a 90%-plus haircut.
And when considering that last year, Vanguard’s valuation estimate for Ola Cabs was around $1.25 Bn, one can only surmise that it has been a bleak year for Ola.
When Ola Cabs Stopped Being the Point
Those close to the company say the beginning of the end started in late 2018 when Aggarwal’s focus shifted to Ola Electric. This was surprising because Ola’s dominance in the market was real, and Uber India was spending heavily to eat Ola’s market share.
And then, according to multiple industry insiders, Aggarwal began to disengage. He believed that EVs would define the future of Indian mobility.
Ola saw the departure of the CFO, the chief business officer, and eventually its CEO Hemant Bakish, who quit in April 2024, with Aggarwal stepping in to run the business directly.