Indian entrepreneurs Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, founder of “Ola Cabs”, are among the youngest millionaires.
Let’s know how they became successful entrepreneurs:
Bhavish Aggarwal hails from Punjab, Ludhiana and was born on 28 August 1985. In 2008, he completed his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. He started his career with Microsoft, where he worked for two years. He then quit Microsoft and started an online company with a view to the selling of short duration tours and holidays online.
One bad experience changed his entire life. Once he rented out a car from Bangalore to Bandipur. In the middle of the journey, the driver changed his mind and asked to increase the fare. When Bhavish declined his demand, the driver did not proceed ahead and abandoned him on the way. From there Bhavish completed his journey on foot. Soon, Bhavish realized how other people faced such kind of plight across the country. He thought to solve this problem and decided to start a car rental company that will provide a hassle-free experience to customers.
Founded Ola Cabs:
This was in January 2011, when Bhavish came across Ankit Bhait and co-founded Ola Cabs with him in Bengaluru. However, his parents did not agree with his decision like other parents do not. But nevertheless, they moved on with their idea and created an online website and started working on it. In the initial days, they had to struggle a lot. While Ankit did coding for the website, Bhavish was managing the operations. Soon, they got their first round of funding from two angel investors and Bhavish’s parents started believing in his ideas. After four years of hard work, Bhavish and Ankit Bhati were the youngest to be listed among the richest Indians for the year 2015.
They made a strategy of not buying any car, they instead rented them. Their strategy was to leave no stone unturned. In the initial days, they used to charge lesser than what the auto-rickshaws charged. Ola Cabs came up with the cheapest rates. They used to pay drivers more than their expectations. There was also an incentive on per trip. Their motive was to bring 10 crore customers and 1 million drivers. As their motive was fulfilled, later salary was reduced to half and they have cut down on incentive as well. The surprising thing about Bhavish is that he does not have his own car but there are 1 million cars on his platform. Today, Ola has become India’s most popular mobile app for cab booking.
