Bhavish Aggarwal: The Ola co-founder who changed public transport landscape in India

Bhavish was born on 28 August 1985 in a Punjabi Hindu Family. He grew up in Ludhiana city of Punjab and completed his higher studies from IIT Bombay in 2008 with computer science and engineering. He commenced his professional career with Microsoft as a Research Intern. He worked with them for a tenure of two years. While working with Microsoft, he also filed two patents and published three papers in international journals.

Bhavish Aggarwal is a successful Indian Entrepreneur and the Co-founder of the leading ride-sharing company, He played a crucial role in changing the public transport landscape in India. Bhavish was also featured in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential people of 2018.

Bhavish was born on 28 August 1985 in a Punjabi Hindu Family. He grew up in Ludhiana city of Punjab and completed his higher studies from IIT Bombay in 2008 with computer science and engineering.

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He commenced his professional career with Microsoft as a Research Intern. He worked with them for a tenure of two years. While working with Microsoft, he also filed two patents and published three papers in international journals.

Later in 2011, Bhavish along with Ankit Bhati co-founded Ola Cabs in Bengaluru. Bhavish got the idea of Ola cabs based on his personal unfortunate experience with taxi services. He had rented a car for a weekend trip from Bengaluru to Bandipur with friends but the driver stopped halfway at Mysore to demand more money. The group had to then leave the car and continue the trip by bus. That is when he came across the idea of establishing a car rental and ridesharing service company that would be economical and also provide a great customer experience.

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Initially, when Ola started out, they offered on-demand rides to customers via phone calls. Soon after they launched the Smartphone app and received a $5 million investment from Tiger Global Management. Since then, the company has only been going forwards. He managed to secure funding from Rehan Yar Khar, Anupam Mittal, and Snapdeal's Kunal Bahl.

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Ola Cabs operate in over 250 cities across India, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. It has successfully become the largest growing network of personal transportation options for Indians. The firm has suffered a major loss of revenue by 95% during the covid outbreak. 

Bhavish continues to build the future at Ola. The firm is worth more than $6.5 billion as of June 2021 and is currently seeking funding of $8 billion from its IPO as per reports of Business Insider.

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He married his girlfriend Rajalakshmi Aggarwal who worked as an Analyst at Ernst and Young. They're both keen lovers of traveling. They started dating back in 2007 and have been together ever since. The couple got married in 2014 after dating for six years. Bhavish also plays squash and cycles twice a week to maintain his fitness and prefers a non-sugar diet. He was awarded CEO of the Year at the SABRE Awards South Asia in 2019. 

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