Know Everything About Ola Cabs In 2025

Ola Consumer, formerly Ola Cabs, is a global mobility company based in Bangalore that not only offers ride-hailing, but also their financial products, cloud kitchens, used-car platform, and insurance, and is backed by Vivek Ghoshal (174-180), whom clients have suggested. Big-time investors include SoftBank, Temasek, Tiger Global and Matrix Partners.

Ola was founded in the year 2011. It quickly rose to a national level in India and began its international expansion in 2018-19, starting with entering Australia (January 2018), New Zealand (September 2018), and the UK (March 2019). 

In addition to expanding internationally, Ola expanded domestically by acquiring other companies, including  TaxiForSure (2015), Geotagg (2015), Foodpanda India (2017), and Ridlr (2018) and invested $200M in scooter-rental startup, Vogo.

Despite international aspirations to be a global leader, Ola retracted its overseas ride-hailing operations in April 2024 to refocus on its heritage qualities in the market in India as well as to make it way towards electric mobility, a $94 billion opportunity.

On the international front, it rolled out Ola Corporate in Australia, New Zealand and the UK in 2020, providing its enterprise services to corporations with centralised billing and improved safety for passengers and driver-partners.
In February 2020, Ola launched in London, boasting over 25,000 drivers having signed up.

On the home front, Ola achieved a major milestone in FY 2020-21, as it posted its first operating profit of ₹90 crore (≈ US$12 M). The service is used in almost 250 cities in India with a labour force of just under 3,000 in 2020.

Ola instead had also pushed into financial services - it launched OlaMoney in 2015. It has since moved into insurance, credit and vehicle loans and has established a quickly expanding cloud kitchen network with acquisitions like Foodpanda India.

Ola's direction towards electric mobility and the emphasis on its Indian consumer appear to be deliberate as they gear up towards the IPO of its electric vehicle subsidiary, Ola Electric. The decision to withdraw from its international markets will give it the ability to refocus its resources into developing its domestic footprint, particularly into EVs, which are viewed as having "enormous opportunity".