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Ola

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Ola, the Indian ride-hailing app, set up relief funds for its drivers in March and April 2020, pledged money to government relief funds and offered its tracking software to Indian governments free. In May it cut 1,400 jobs, 35 percent of its staff.

  • Category: mobility
  • Pandemic layoffs: 1,400 employees, 35% of staff (Layoffs.fyi, May 2020)
  • Last updated: 2026-11-01

In the archive

Founders, executives and investors

Ola was founded in 2011 by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, according to the company's press releases. Aggarwal was co-founder and CEO of the Ola Group in April 2020, when the group listed its units as the ride-hailing arm Ola Mobility, Ola Financial Services, Ola Foods and Ola Electric. Its parent company is ANI Technologies Private Ltd.

Inc42 describes Matrix, now Z47, as a long-time Ola investor. Ola Electric's draft prospectus, dated Dec. 22, 2023, lists ANI Technologies in its promoter group with 4.35% of Ola Electric's shares on a fully diluted basis before the offering, and Aggarwal as promoter with 36.94%.

Business before the pandemic

In its own words in April 2020, Ola was "India's largest mobility platform and one of the world's largest ride-hailing companies," connecting riders with more than 2 million driver-partners. Around the app the group ran Ola Fleet Technologies, which it called India's largest fleet-management business; Ola Financial Services, which sold micro-insurance and credit-led payments; a food business built on its own kitchens; and the electric-vehicle arm, Ola Electric.

Its app booked rides on bikes, auto-rickshaws, metered taxis and cabs in more than 250 cities in India, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Pandemic-relief role: driver funds and free software

The first measures were for drivers. On March 21, 2020, Ola said it would pay driver-partners and their spouses who tested positive for COVID-19 Rs 1,000 a day for up to 21 days, within a floater of Rs 30,000. It also gave each driver three free online doctor consultations through Mfine. Two days later, in Sydney, it set up a fund paying Australian drivers who were infected or told to self-isolate up to 14 days of their average daily earnings.

By April 9 the Ola Group and its employees had put INR 20 crore (200 million rupees) into the Ola Foundation's Drive the Driver Fund for cab, auto-rickshaw and kaali-peeli taxi drivers, and Aggarwal had given the fund a year's salary. The group pledged another INR 5 crore to the PM CARES Fund and INR 3 crore to state chief ministers' relief funds. On April 16 it offered Ola CONNECTS, its tracking and navigation platform, to government agencies at no cost. It said it was working with the Punjab government to track the movement of produce from more than 17 lakh (1.7 million) farmers into the state's mandis.

SBA's PPP loan data list no borrower named ANI Technologies, Ola Cabs or Ola Fleet.

Layoffs

Layoffs.fyi's June 8, 2020 analysis listed Ola among the ten largest tech layoffs since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic: 1,400 employees, 35 percent of staff, on May 20. How Ola handled layoffs →

After the first shock

After the pandemic the Ola name covered several companies. In January 2025, Outlook Business described three associate companies: the publicly listed Ola Electric, the ride-hailing operator Ola Consumer, and the AI startup Krutrim, which Aggarwal launched in December 2023 and which became a unicorn in 2024 after raising $50 million from Matrix Partners India. ANI Technologies built Ola Maps, released in 2022, with help from Geospoc, a Pune mapping company Ola bought in October 2021. The same report, citing the Economic Times, said Aggarwal planned to fold the three into a conglomerate, and, citing Entrackr, that ANI Technologies had reportedly discussed an IPO of Ola Consumer at a November 2024 shareholder meeting.

Where the company is now

The latest record in our sources is Inc42's May 10, 2026 report on Krutrim. It said the AI company had pivoted to cloud infrastructure, paused its language-model and chip work, and, according to Inc42's sources, gone from more than 550 employees in August 2025 to about 150 to 160 by March 2026. Almost 90% of Krutrim's FY25 revenue of INR 101.7 crore came from Ola Group companies, and its cloud already ran workloads for Ola Electric, with Ola Consumer expected to move over.

Sources

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