Bhavish Aggarwal & Ankit Bhati on Capital Allocation

In a striking cap-table move, Aggarwal bought a 92.5 percent stake in Ola Electric from ANI Technologies in late 2018 / early 2019 at a valuation of roughly one lakh rupees (about 1,400 dollars then). ANI retained the remaining 7.5 percent in exchange for licensing the 'Ola' brand, in effect letting the founder house the new venture outside the existing cap table.

Funding velocity was fast: 56 million dollars from Tiger Global and Matrix India in February 2019, an undisclosed Series A cheque from Ratan Tata in May 2019, then a 250-million-dollar Series B from SoftBank in July 2019 that crossed the one-billion-dollar valuation mark — the unicorn tag arrived in under 30 months from founding.

Ola expanded internationally in 2018 — Australia in January, New Zealand in September, the UK in March 2019, and London in February 2020 with over 25,000 drivers registered. In April 2024 the company abruptly exited all international markets with only a few days' notice, refocusing capital on India — a tacit admission that the globalisation phase had not delivered attractive unit economics.

Aggarwal was named to Time's 100 Most Influential People list in 2018, recognising his role in building the country's dominant ride-hailing franchise. Forbes estimated his net worth at around 2.3 billion dollars, placing him among the world's youngest self-made billionaires — a position materially reinforced by the Ola Electric IPO pop in 2024.

A series of vertical bets — Ola Dash (quick commerce), Ola Cars (new and pre-owned car marketplace), Ola Pedal (bike sharing) — were launched, scaled down and finally shut between 2021 and 2022. The serial closure pattern reinforced the impression of an experimentation engine inside Ola, with capital spent on category exploration rather than on a focused core.