Bhavish Aggarwal & Ankit Bhati on Diversification

The Ola Foods history shows the founder's restlessness beyond the core: a March 2015 Ola Cafe attempt that closed within a year, a December 2017 acquisition of Foodpanda India with a planned 200-million-dollar infusion, the discontinuation of food delivery in June 2019, and a continued cloud-kitchen business that ran more than 50 outlets by 2021. The repeated attempts yielded limited strategic value relative to capital spent.

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.

On 18 August 2024 Ola Cabs was rebranded as Ola Consumer, signalling a broader pivot from a pure ride-hailing brand to a multi-vertical consumer platform. The rename followed the Ola Electric IPO by days and aligned Ola's three faces — Consumer, Electric and Krutrim — under a unified house of brands strategy.