Uber gave a serious setback to Ola after launching in India as Uber was outspending huge money in the process of capturing customers. But Ola managed to cope with this competition and come to the top in terms of market share and revenue with some really simple yet smart moves.

Sharing his views about the whole scenario of Indian market, Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal spoke at an IIT Bay Area Alumni meet recently and the company was facing a tough time when Uber was spending 5 times as much as Ola.

We held on to our market share and even today we have 2:1 market share against our competition. They had to really outspend but were never really able to gain dominant market share in India,” Bhavish said.

Expansion in smaller cities

Explaining Ola’s strategy, Bhavish said that their expansion plan included not just the top 5/6 cities in India, but smaller towns and cities also. This has helped the company to have a presence in 200 cities and towns in quick time. Also, Ola had to customise their business model and execution seeing how Uber has spending money.

Future is Technology

About the future of Indian market, Bhavish Aggarwal believes that technology will be the key and they are looking to invest in building new-age technology and that is the reason why Ola has announced setting up an Advanced Technology Centre (ATC) in San Francisco Bay. The company will be hiring around 100-150 people this year to work in ATC.

OLA will be focusing on electric mobility AI and ML capabilities because Indian Government is reportedly planning to launch a policy for cab aggregators to convert 40% of their cars to electric vehicles by April 2026.