In 2007, two young students of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, set out on a bicycle tour of 335 km from their campus in Powai to Ratnagiri in coastal Maharashtra. They had been meticulously and rigorously planning and training for the trip for weeks in advance. And, finally, around Diwali, they hit the road. On the first day, they crossed Alibaug, Kashid, along the north Konkan coast and Murud-Janjira in Raigad district, covering more than half the distance they had targeted. But a day later, their energy and enthusiasm fizzled out and they were on their way back, taking a bus home instead of riding their bicycles.
Even though Bhavish and Ankit abandoned their grand bicycle tour, there is one journey that has been hugely successful for them—their business venture Ola, a word that sounds like the word for ‘hello’ in Spanish. Ola was first started by Bhavish as olatrips.com, a portal that helped in reservation of cars and hotels for outstation trips. Once, after he had rented a car for a weekend trip to Bandipur from Bengaluru, the driver stopped midway in Mysore and demanded to be paid more. Unrelenting, Bhavish covered the rest of the distance by bus. This bitter experience seems to have been a sign from the universe for it inspired the entrepreneur in him to realize the need for a quality cab service. Ankit joined him, and the duo created Ola Cabs in 2011.
The universe always gives us a sign. Look out for the right signs.
Bhavish had met Ankit on their first day at IIT. Their rooms were next to each other and Ankit had walked across and knocked on Bhavish’s door to introduce himself. Best friends ever since, they shared a mentor and often teamed up at tech fests. Passionate and enterprising, the young students dreamt of starting their own company together. Hungry for real-world experience, they took part in a number of extracurricular works, including freelance coding projects. Bhavish recalls that they did not get paid for the first project they worked on, but what they gained instead was invaluable—experiences that taught them about the core principles of real business and a lifelong friendship to treasure.
Born to doctor parents, Naresh Kumar Aggarwal and Usha Aggarwal, on 28 August 1985, Bhavish spent his early years in Afghanistan and the UK and moved to Punjab in India in the third grade. His father was very strict. He recalls how ecstatic he was when he got admission into IIT Bombay to study Computer Science. His father, however, did not seem too elated with his rank. On hearing that Bhavish had ranked twenty-third, his father felt he could do better. Many years later, when he first told his parents about starting his new ride-sharing venture, his father commented, ‘You finished IIT just to start a travel agency?’
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His worried parents, strangers to the new technological developments happening in the modern world, couldn’t comprehend why their son would leave the lucrative job he had at Microsoft Research—which he had bagged soon after graduating from IIT in 2008—and start his own business. So upset were they that they refused to speak to him for six months. After Bhavish became successful and Ola finally reached his hometown, his parents got to know about it through their driver, who quit the job to buy his own car and register as a driver with Ola. That’s when his mother gradually came around to downloading her son’s app and learned to summon a car whenever she wanted one. This sense of new-found liberation that his mother has experienced makes Bhavish very proud.
Resistance does not last forever.
Despite the initial opposition from home and the challenges he faced, Bhavish was adamant to make his venture work. In the initial days, Bhavish could be found pitching his idea and showing the early version of the Ola app to anyone and everyone who showed any interest. He was determined to succeed. Such was his dedication towards his customers that, in the early days, he would often borrow his then girlfriend Rajalakshmi’s car to fulfil trip requests and fill in when drivers were unavailable.
Today, Rajalakshmi and Bhavish are married. She has seen him through his days of struggle and has been a witness to Ola’s journey from the beginning. On dates, before marriage, Bhavish would often admit to being broke and let Rajalakshmi pay for the coffee. He thought of it as an investment for the future, he says in jest in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
It took Bhavish ten movie dates to finally gather the courage to tell Rajalakshmi how he felt. After their marriage, Rajalakshmi wanted to buy a Vespa, but Bhavish kept discouraging her. He wanted her to use the Ola services instead. It took three years for him to convince her about the benefits of Ola, but he finally did it. He still doesn’t own a car but instead uses the Ola services to understand the challenges that his customers face so he can improve the product better.
This excerpt from Sophia Graham’s 20 Millionaires Under 30 has been published with the permission of Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd.
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