STARTUP SPECIAL .........................STARTUP OF THE YEAR - Standing Tall, the Best of the Best

STARTUP OF THE YEAR - Standing Tall, the Best of the Best





Ola represents a hugely disruptive innovation and fast-paced growth, making it a worthy Unicorn

... and the award goes to

Bhavish Aggarwal Ola, Bengaluru

Ola cofounder and Chief Executive Bhavish Aggarwal is a fan of technology that provides seamless efficiency--he owns an all-Mac suite of gadgets, including MacBook Air, iPhone 5 and iPad Mini. He's trying something similar with his online taxi-aggregation company , India's largest.

In four years of its existence, Ola has expanded to 100 cities with a fleet of more than 2 lakh cars, is adding ondemand bus aggregation and a food and grocery delivery service, and is working on new initiatives including carpooling and logistics.

“Since inception five years ago, we have grown by leaps and bounds, now present in over a 100 cities, impacting mobility of millions everyday,“ Aggarwal said. “While in the typical sense of the word, we have gone beyond being a startup, we are happy to accept the privilege of being nominated as the Startup of the Year in this first of its kind initiative by the Economic Times.“ Ola is seeded in a typical startup story . Aggarwal's parents thought he had gone crazy when he told them he was set to try his hand at running a taxi business. But he has scaled the business like no other startup in the past six months, despite running into a few regulatory hiccups.

In just a few months after incorporating Ola in Mumbai in April 2011, Aggarwal and cofounder Ankit Bhati, both alumni of the IIT-Bombay , raised funds from Snapdeal cofounder and CEO Kunal Bahl and angel investors Rehan Yar Khan and Anupam Mittal. There has been no looking back since.

Aggarwal's ambition is to change how India travels and revolutionise personal transportation in the country .“All of us have an entrepreneur in us,“ Aggarwal said in an earlier interview with ET.

“Few take the leap, doubting whether they will make it. But you'll never know unless you take the big step.“

Ola, now headquartered in Bengaluru, is now among India's most valuable Internet startups--at $2.5 billion-and counts Japan's richest man, Masayoshi Son of SoftBank Group, and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner as investors. Tata group Emeritus Chairman Ratan Tata is an adviser.

In India, Ola challenged and won against incumbents such as Meru and far overtaken global giant Uber.This year, Ola acquired smaller rival TaxiForSure for $200 million.

ET14AUG15