OlaCabs

Ola

Type	Private
Industry	Transport
Founded	Bangalore, Karnataka, India (3 December 2010 (2010-12-03))
Founders	Bhavish Aggarwal Ankit Bhati
Headquarters	Vile Parle (East), Mumbai, Maharashtra, India[1]
Number of locations	65 cities (2015)
Area served	India
Key people	Bhavish Aggarwal (CEO) Ankit Bhati (CTO)
Owner	ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd
Website	olacabs.com

OlaCabs is an online cab aggregator based out of Bengaluru and among the fastest growing taxi hiring firms. Taxi booking facility can be availed through app, website or through calls.

History

Founded on 3 December 2010 by Bhavish Aggarwal (CEO) and Ankit Bhati. By 2014, the company has expanded to a network of more than 18000 cars across more than 65 cities. In November 2014, Ola expanded to incorporate autos on-trial basis in Bengaluru.^[2] Post the trial phase, Ola Auto expanded to other cities like Delhi, Pune and Chennai starting December 2014.

In April 2015, over 40000 cabs are registered & successfully running across 22 cities of India.

Service

Olacabs provides different types of cab service ranging from economic to luxury travel. ^[3] The cabs can be reserved through a web browser or a mobile app. This cab service supports both cash and cashless payment options with Ola money. It claims to clock an average of more than 150,000 bookings per day and commands 60 percent of the market share in India.^[4]

Funding

It raised $330k^[5] in its initial round of funding on April 21, 2011. The company received Series A funding of $5 million from Tiger Global Management; Series B funding of USD 20 million from Matrix Partners and Tiger Global; Series C funding of $41.5 million from Steadview Capital, Sequoia Capital and its existing investors. In Series D round of funding on Oct 25, 2014, it raised $210 million from SoftBank Internet and Media Inc. and its existing investors.^[6][7][8]

On April 9, 2015 - OLACabs raised $315 million in series G funding from ABG Capital, Accel Partners, Mauritius Investments, Tiger Global Management & two other investors. The newest funding rounds have been led by DST Global which has pumped about $40mn in Olacabs at a valuation of $3.5bn.

Acquisitions

OlaCabs bought TFS on 1st March 2015 TaxiForSure,^[9] for about $200 million.^[10]

Criticism

OlaCabs' technology came under criticism when an engineer stumbled upon its unsecured mobile app. The API calls could be replayed to top up its wallet. ^[11] OlaCabs was quick to fix the glitch much before this came out in the open recently. Questions have been raised on responsible disclosure practices especially in the case of companies which do not have a bug bounty program runnig. Ola in its blog issued a categorical statement to that effect ^[12]

References