Founder Bhavish Aggarwal along with the new CEO of Ola Mobility Hemant Bakshi announced that Ola’s India mobility business has turned “EBITDA positive in FY 23”. While pushing for electric rides and its premium Prime plus service, Aggarwal also stressed that Ola is focusing on leveraging ONDC for further growth.
ANI Technologies (Ola’s parent company) recently hired former Unilever executive Hemant Bakshi as its new CEO. Prior to joining Ola around four months back, Bakshi was the executive VP of the marketplace and chairperson of Unilever Indonesia.
“India’s economic growth is unstoppable and we aspire to serve 1 billion Indians. We are proud to serve India at scale with a vast and integrated ecosystem empowering consumers and enabling partners. As a technology-first business, leading with innovation, we are confident to spearhead the country’s mobility ambitions and lead the next phase of growth in the industry at large,” said Bhavish Aggarwal, Founder, Chairman and MD, Ola.
According to the company, Ola’s India mobility business posted consolidated revenue from operations and other income for FY 23 at Rs 3,000 crores as compared to Rs 2,120 crores in FY 22. The EBITDA loss excluding discontinuos business reduced to Rs 29 cr in FY 23 from Rs 291 cr in FY 22. ANI Technologies Standalone (Ola’s India Mobility business) total revenue has gone up by 48% in FY 23 to Rs 2135 crores from Rs 1350 crores in FY 22. Total revenue includes revenue from operations and other income. At the same time, the company clocked standalone revenue of Rs 2,135 crores and segment-adjusted EBITDA of around Rs 250 crores in FY 23.
Responding to questions from the media related to competition from new ride-hailing apps that charge less or no commission from its partner drivers, Aggarwal said, “No business model can sustain by claiming 0% commission. India hai… paise toh banane padenge… To attract new users and boost initial market share, things like no commission or offers can help. We also gave out many offers… but in the long run these cannot help in growth,”
”No business model can sustain by claiming 0% commission. India hai… paise toh banane padenge… “
Ola is looking at increasing its market penetration by providing affordable rides with electric scooters and is aiming at utilising its technology and network for partners and consumers to expand its ONDC arm.
“A lot of people don’t understand ONDC fully. I think India has done a huge innovation with ONDC which other countries don’t have. India has unbundled commerce and democratised it at the same time. It will gain traction over a period of time. People like us will have to get engaged with it. With ONDC, the entire ecosystem can do well rather than one walled-garden making money. More than that, ONDC will increase the penetration of digital commerce in India dramatically,” said Aggarwal.
Focusing on core technologies, the company also made the shift to its own “Ola Maps” for driving efficiency and bringing costs down.
“In the consumer digital world, we need to control some core technologies and one of them is location services. We were earlier relying on ‘American companies’ and their APIs for our location needs. One of the most important things of urban mobility is having a good mapping solution that can lead to better traffic estimates, efficient routes, better landmarking, and understanding newer points of interest among others. We invested in building our own Ola Maps pre-Covid and took step-by-step actions. Ola Maps was not something done overnight. We hired some early talent and did not make much noise about it. We have been perfecting different aspects of the maps over the past few years with customised features and with high quality data of Indian roads, we keep improving our algorithm. Right now, we are mostly using Ola Maps for both driver partners and consumers,” he added.
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