As you may know, Bhavish Aggarwal, the CEO and co-founder of several divisions of Indian ride-hailing company Ola, is currently restructuring the firm. So now, he is pushing for the intellectual property rights of the Ola brand to be moved to his family office, people familiar with the matter told ridesharing media.
Those people added that this reorganization within the company has prompted pushback from a section of ANI shareholders.
This repositioning comes at this time when Aggarwal’s various verticals are entering new business lines thaty need significant investment.
Aggarwal is an Indian entrepreneur who has founded or co-founded Ola Consumer, Ola Electric, and Ola Krutrim, a large language model AI company that became the first AI unicorn of the South Asian country in 2024 at an estimated valuation of $1 billion.
Ola once experimented with food delivery services, an eCommerce venture, and a platform for selling used cars, though those projects did not find the same success as it is doing now.
Aggarwal was born in 1985 in Ludhiana, Punjab. The Aggarwals are among the more influential clans in the Bania community. Across history, they have been among the most affluent or richest classes in the caste system in India. For one, the two richest Indians are both Banias, as well as some prominent Indian businessmen and startup founders.
ANI Technologies is in charge of operating Ola’s ride-hailing division and currently holds the brand’s intellectual property, licensed to Ola Electric, an electric vehicle or EV company listed separately.
The shift in intellectual property ownership sets in amidst broader questions over the cross-holding of assets within the Ola ecosystem. The firms – ANI, Ola Electric, and Krutrim – have overlapping, but unique shareholder bases.
For example, Ola Map’s intellectual property brand rights were recently transferred from ANI to Krutrim AI at a certain asset value.
But then, again, it could be negligible, too. Aggarwal currently holds around nine percent of ANI Technologies, over 30 percent of Ola Electric, and nearly 90 percent of Krutrim AI.
The path toward restructuring was never easy. In 2017, when Ola Electric was carved out from ANI Technologies as a distinct entity, not a subsidiary, investors raised the same questions over resource sharing and strategic control.
For instance, ANI shareholders such as Warburg Pincus, Vanguard, Steadview Capital, and Steadview Capital and DST Global are not holding stakes in Ola Electric and Krutrim AI.
Meanwhile, and instead, the likes of SoftBank, Hyundai Motor, Temasek, Tencent, Tiger Global, and Alpha Wave Global are backing Ola Electric and ANI. Quite big names.
Also, venture capital firm Z47 – formerly Matrix Partners India – and former Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin’s family office are investors in all those three entities.
“Our group structure is being proactively realigned to unlock greater value and operational agility as the broader markets and industries evolve,” a spokesperson for Ola stated. “This rejig will be undertaken thoughtfully and communicated at the right time.”
The spokesperson also added that the group comprises several high-growth businesses, which are “not only individually strong, but also strategically synergistic, amplifying each other’s impact across mobility, EVs and energy storage, and AI.”