#bhavish agarwal is an indian entrepreneur

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Success Story Behind Bhavish Agarwal's Ola Cabs

While most of us aspire to possess swanky cars with hip chauffeurs, have a look at this Indian businessman who charmed millions of people by creating the finest online "Book A Ride" service. People no longer had to endure crowded buses or rickshaws thanks to the brains behind one such "e-commerce" enterprise.

Bhavish Agarwal is an Indian entrepreneur and co-founder of "Ola Cabs," was born on August 28, 1985, in Ludhiana, Punjab. He later earned a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Bombay in 2008. He presently resides in Bangalore. In addition to working nonstop, he likes squash, cycling, and running a photography blog, which demonstrates how much he values photography. His favorite book is "Steve Jobs: A Biography."

Bhavish Agarwal, a computer-skilled blogger at Desitech, created his own blog. 2008 to 2009. Desitech, In is dedicated to covering Indian start-ups, events, and other tech-geek-related topics. While he was already climbing the success ladder, he launched his career with a bang by accepting a position as a research intern with the high remediation firm "Microsoft Research" and afterward getting reinstated as an assistant researcher for two years from 2008 to 2010. He simultaneously filed for two patents and had three articles published in internal publications. In 2010, Bhavish rebranded his prior business and quit his job to create the online rental taxi service empire known as "OLA CABS."

Bhavish went through a difficult time when his business was first starting out; he once answered customer calls and transported a client to the airport.

Success Story Behind Bhavish Agarwal's Ola Cabs

We don't need to introduce Ola. Ola, the first Indian cab aggregator business, has made using cab services simple. Ola, formerly known as OlaCabs and currently owned by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd., was established in December 2010 by two IIT Bombay alumni. Since it was one of the first cab firms in India, Ola has done a great job of bridging the gap between commuters and cab owners! Co-founder of Ola Cabs and Ola Electric and an entrepreneur from India named Bhavish Aggarwal. Aggarwal was listed among Time magazine's 2018 list of the 100 Most Influential People.

Story of Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal

The creator of Ola, Bhavish Aggarwal, graduated with a B.Tech. in computer science from IIT Bombay in 2008. Bhavish, the proprietor of Ola Cabs, worked for Microsoft Research in Bangalore for his first two years following graduation. He filed two patent applications and three research publications for publication in foreign journals while he was employed by Microsoft.

While pursuing his entrepreneurial ambition, he established an online company to promote short-term trips and excursions, which he eventually rebranded as Ola Cabs. Bhavish Aggarwal is the co-founder and CEO of Ola. The owner of OLA, Bhavish Aggarwal, was born on August 28, 1985, and according to statistics from 2019, his personal net worth was estimated to be over $350 million. By September 2021, Bhavish's fortune had increased to Rs 7500 crore ($958.43 million).

His inclusion on the list of the 40 richest persons in India, which is headed by Divyank Turakhia and included Sachin and Binny Bansal, Neha Narkhede, Nakul Aggarwal, and Ritesh Arora and has a net worth of Rs 12,500, was made possible by this.

Ola's CEO, Bhavish Aggarwal, is allegedly aiming to concentrate more on the business's upcoming and new projects while moving away from the day-to-day operations of Ola's core operations. Arun GR, who joined Ola in 2021 from Vedanta Resources and previously held the positions of Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Ola Electric and Ola Financial Services, will be in charge of the business's everyday operations, according to an internal organizational letter.

Bhavish claims that he would keep heading up Ola's team building, product development, engineering responsibilities, two-wheeler and car projects, quick commerce verticals, global growth, and other activities.

Bhavish Aggarwal's net worth

Aggarwal has a net worth of 11700 crores as of 2022. His company, Ola, is worth $6.5 billion. He is a young man and one of India's newest billionaires. He loves an opulent way of life with all the amenities that come with excessive wealth. He has multiple expensive cars, including a Mercedes S600, a Bugatti Veyron, and a Rolls Royce Phantom.

Ankit Bhati - co-founder of ola

Ankit Bhati is a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Ola Cabs. He and Bhavish Aggarwal co-founded Ola in 2010. Additionally, he helped create ANI Technologies. There have been speculations that Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal, the firm's founder, had serious differences that led to their split from the ridesharing company last year. However, his contribution to the company extends much beyond these assumptions.

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OYO alumni have gone on to launch over 50 startups!!

here is a list of some notable startups founded by OYO alumni: - Zolostays: Founded by Abhishek Kumar and Sandeep Saxena, Zolostays is a hospitality platform that provides managed housing solutions for students and young professionals. - Nestaway: Founded by Amitava Saha and Smruti Juneja, Nestaway is a furniture rental startup offering managed housing solutions. - Stanza Living: Founded by Anindya Dutta and Vineet Kumar, Stanza Living is a student housing startup that provides fully furnished apartments with amenities like housekeeping and laundry services. - OYO Life: Founded by Ritesh Agarwal, OYO Life is a co-living startup that provides shared living spaces for young professionals. - Revv: Founded by Kunal Kumar and Karan Jain, Revv is a car rental startup that offers self-drive car rentals in multiple cities in India. - Ola Electric: Founded by Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola Electric is an electric vehicle company that manufactures and sells electric scooters and is working on developing electric cars. - Urban Company: Founded by Abhiraj Bhal, Raghav Chandra, and Varun Khaitan, Urban Company is a home services platform that provides services like cleaning, plumbing, and pest control. - MyGlamm: Founded by Darpan Sanghvi, Priyanka Gill, and Sanjaya Sehgal, MyGlamm is a beauty brand that sells cosmetics and personal care products online and through its stores. - Pepperfry: Founded by Ambareesh Murthy and Ashish Shah, Pepperfry is an online furniture and home decor marketplace. - Policybazaar: Founded by Yashish Dahiya and Alok Bansal, Policybazaar is an online insurance marketplace that allows users to compare and buy insurance policies.

launch over 50 startups!! This is just a small sample of the many startups that OYO alumni have founded. Many other successful ventures are out there, and the list continues to grow.

What could be the reason that OYO alumni have gone on to launch over 50 startups!!

There are several possible reasons why OYO alumni have launched over 50 startups: Exposure and experience: Working at OYO, a high-growth startup, would have exposed its employees to various aspects of running a business, from product development and marketing to fundraising and operations. This firsthand experience could equip them with the skills and knowledge needed to launch their ventures. Network and support: OYO has built a strong network of investors, mentors, and partners. Alumni might leverage these connections to secure funding, advice, and support for their startups. Additionally, the alumni network itself could serve as a valuable source of collaboration and support. Entrepreneurial culture: OYO's fast-paced, dynamic environment might have fostered an entrepreneurial spirit among its employees. They might have been encouraged to take risks, innovate, and think outside the box, qualities that are crucial for entrepreneurs. Industry understanding: Many OYO alumni launch startups within the hospitality or related industries. Their experience at OYO would have given them a deep understanding of the market, its challenges, and opportunities, which could be valuable assets for their businesses. Financial incentives: OYO offered ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) to its employees, which could have provided them with financial resources to start their ventures upon leaving the company. Market opportunity: The Indian startup ecosystem is booming, with increasing access to funding and support. This favorable environment could make launching a startup more attractive to OYO alumni. It's important to note that these are just some potential reasons, and the specific motivations of each OYO alumnus who launched a startup would vary. Here are some additional points to consider: - The number of startups launched by OYO alumni is impressive, but it's worth noting that not all of them will be successful. - Launching a startup is a risky endeavor, and many factors contribute to success or failure. - While OYO's experience may have played a role in the success of some alumni startups, it's not the only factor. Overall, the high number of startups launched by OYO alumni is a testament to the company's impact on its employees and the broader Indian startup ecosystem. Read the full article

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Top 10 Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs of India

Top 10 Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs of India

When the word “Entrepreneur” comes to mind, the connotation that arrives along with it is “risk-taker”. Encyclopedias and dictionaries define entrepreneurship to be the act of creation. Designing, creating and running a small venture is what entrepreneurship in its essence is.

Deep down though, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship are largely running around the ability to be a risk-taker. The ability to believe in yourself and creating something meaningful, taking the risks involved in it heads-on. Entrepreneurship is about solving problems. Identifying the needs, wants and desires of a customer segment, and providing the products or services.

Economics has a rather intriguing definition for entrepreneurship. The discipline of economics views an entrepreneur as someone who looks up the commercial foundations of the opportunities. The entrepreneur makes use of technology to create a new tomorrow, solving problems at the core of their focused discipline.

Lots of jargon? Let’s simplify. An entrepreneur is a problem solver, except for that fact that she is also willing to find the best solution, taking utmost riskiest factor into consideration. Furthermore, it’s a battle, and they are hell-bent to emerge as winners.

India has become one of the topmost countries to produce startup unicorns. Our glorifying entrepreneurship history has given us legends like Ambani, Birla, Tata and Mittal. Moreover, let’s take a look at the Top 10 Most Inspiring Entrepreneurs in India.

10.| Shradha Sharma

Shradha Sharma founded the popular entrepreneurship blog cum news platform, YourStory. It focuses on the Indian startup ecosystem, covering news ranging from stories of entrepreneurs to funding alerts. Apart from the Indian startup ecosystem, it also covers Europe, the USA and almost every other continent and country.

It publishes its articles in various vernacular languages, as well, languages foreign to India. Sharma started it in October 2008 and has been operating it ever since. Furthermore, Sharma regularly interviews new entrepreneurs and features stories from across the world.

9.| Sriharsha Majety

Around the time Uber was changing the way people take cabs in 2014, Majety was changing the way people eat food in India. Starting from being a courier aggregator, Majety shifted to food ordering and delivery services. Thus, in 2014, Swiggy was born. Swiggy went on to become India’s fastest-growing unicorn.

Swiggy is a food ordering and delivery service’s aggregator. Although it is facing stiff competition from other players such as Zomato and Uber Eats, the journey of Majety and his mates, Reddy and Jaimini still remains inspirational.

8.| Phanindra Sama

The lack of centralized information providing platform regarding bus tickets during Diwali Vacations prompted Sama to create redBus. The journey of Sama is quite intriguing to young entrepreneurs. The problem Sama faced while trying to search for information regarding buses from Bangalore to Hyderabad, made him realize that the internet could be a medium to connect the vendors and the customers.

Furthermore, by 2014, redBus was already in collaboration with Uber and Ibibo Group.

7.| Sandeep Aggarwal

Sandeep can be described as a serial entrepreneur. After co-founding the successful Indian marketplace, Shopclues, he went on to create Droom. Droom is becoming India’s biggest automobile marketplace for buying and selling vehicles. Over these years, Aggarwal with his efforts expanded Droom to become a full-fledged automobile company, that does everything except manufacturing.

6.| Bhavish Aggarwal

Bhavish Aggarwal co-founded OlaCabs, the Indian solution to cab disorganization problem. Uber is a good analogy and a competitor to OlaCabs in India. Aggarwal started off as a Researcher in Microsoft after completing college from the premier Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. In 2011, he wanted to create a solution for outstation rentals in India. They gradually pivoted to ride-hailing services.

They were hailed as the youngest richest Indians in 2015, and since then, have become investors themselves, investing in companies such as Vogo.

5.| Sridhar Vembu

Vembu is the man behind the corporate SaaS provider platform, Zoho. It has a come to a long way from selling network equipment to creating applications focused on the B2B (Business to Business) market segment. Vembu, a pass out of the esteemed Princeton University, and Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, created Zoho due to the lack of proper online applications.

Zoho, apart from providing applications focused on the corporate, also provides basic business tools to nurturing startups. Furthermore, it has a coveted 40 million active users now, with over 45 products in their catalogue.

4.| Kunal Shah

Shah brought the work of recharging mobile into the hands of the consumers through their online portal, in India. Started in 2010, Freecharge founded by Kunal Shah and Sandeep Tandon has come a long way from just being a mobile recharge platform. They were acquired by the eCommerce platform Snapdeal.

Recently, Axis Bank bought Freecharge. Kunal Shah left from the post of the Chief Executive Officer just after the Snapdeal Deal.

3.| Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Sharma was born and brought up in the small town of Aligarh. His story of founding PayTM is a historical saga, for some and for some it is a real entrepreneurial journey. He passed out of the prestigious Delhi Technological University in 1998. While in college he created various web platforms and sold them.

He started One97 Communications in 2000 as one in all platform for news and blog. In 2010, he started PayTM. He bootstrapped it with his own money, and in the phase of demonetisation in India around November 2016, gave it a boost.

Sharma also became the youngest Indian to be on the Forbes’ Billionaires list in 2017.

2.| Ritesh Agarwal

Ritesh Agarwal has become the poster boy for Entrepreneurs in India. While travelling he realized the lack of proper facilities for a budget traveller. That drove him to drop out of college, and start Oravel Stays. He became the first and only entrepreneur in India to receive the Theil Fellowship. He gradually pivoted Oravel to OYO Rooms.

According to the stats, it has become the third-largest hotel chain in the world. Agarwal expanded OYO to China, the United Kingdom, and has plans for the United States also.

1.| Sachin Bansal

Sachin Bansal co-founded Flipkart, one of India’s biggest eCommerce platform, with Binny Bansal. A pass out from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, Bansal served as the Chief Executive Officer for about 11 years. Flipkart was bought by Walmart for about $16-$19 billion dollars. After the Walmart deal, Bansal left Flipkart as the CEO, and Binny was promoted to the position.

Bansal is described as an enthusiastic coder and a really avid gamer. He was known to organize gaming and coding challenges in the company. Furthermore, he was an engineer in the Amazon Web Services, which he left in 2007 for Flipkart.

Moreover, he has been the Entrepreneur of the Year award by Economics Time in 2013. Since the Walmart deal, he has become an active investor in companies such as OlaCabs, InShorts and Unacademy.

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2019 Throwback: Bursting the startup bubble

2019 Throwback: Bursting the startup bubble

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The Indian startup ecosystem has many celebratory entrepreneurs today. Names like Sachin and Binny Bansal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Bhavish Aggarwal, Ankit Bhati, and Ritesh Agarwal need no introduction.

But, for every Flipkart, Oyo, Paytm, or Ola, there are 90 other failed startups. In fact, according to a report by the IBM Institute for Business Value and Oxford Economics, close to 90…

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Paytm’s Founder Says Winning in India Prepared Him for the World: Interview

(Bloomberg Markets) — Vijay Shekhar Sharma, 41, founded closely held One97 Communications and its brand Paytm (rhymes with ATM) almost two decades ago. It offered a variety of digital services before moving into payments in 2014, just as millions of urban Indians began shopping online.

Two years later, India’s banks created the Unified Payments Interface, a tech umbrella to help banks and fintech startups create services quickly, and the government eliminated high-value currency notes, turbocharging demand for Paytm’s services. Sharma, a self-described hippie who loves to sprinkle U2 and Pink Floyd lyrics into his conversation, now has backers including Alibaba’s Jack Ma, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett.

Paytm is the market leader in India, where KPMG sees digital payments growing at the fastest rate of any country, with transaction value rising at an estimated annual rate of 20.2% from 2019 to 2023. But competition is heating up as Google, Walmart, and Facebook jump into India, wielding cashback offers to lure customers. Meanwhile, the government has proposed scrapping fees on digital payments, Paytm’s core product. In an interview in Delhi, Sharma described his career and how Paytm is adapting to India’s changing market, cutting annual expenses 45% and preparing to raise new funds to accelerate the next phase of growth in smaller cities.

SARITHA RAI: What led you to digital payments and e-commerce?

VIJAY SHEKHAR SHARMA: I grew up in a small town called Aligarh where I studied in a very basic Hindi medium school [where Hindi is the medium of instruction]. I didn’t have fancy schooling. I was lucky to get into engineering college in Delhi at the age of 15. I taught myself English by memorizing rock songs and simultaneously reading translated textbooks in English and Hindi. When I graduated, I was the youngest teenage engineer out of the University of Delhi. As the Pink Floyd song Breathe goes,

Run, rabbit run. Dig that hole, forget the sun, And when at last the work is done Don’t sit down it’s time to dig another one. For long you live and high you fly But only if you ride the tide And balanced on the biggest wave You race towards an early grave.

My early heroes were internet entrepreneurs Jerry Yang and Mark Andreessen. I started One97 Communications in 2000 and began by selling content to users through telecom operators. By 2010 the smartphone became the distribution channel. Payment became our thing, and destiny was in our hands. In 2014 we launched our licensed wallet product. By 2015, Ant Financial had invested in us, then Alibaba and then SoftBank.

A whole generation of internet entrepreneurs in India have small-town roots and hunger to build something significant and successful. My father was a schoolteacher. I had four siblings; there was no money to go around. I had to find ways to make money through weekend consulting jobs to set up computer networks for small businesses. At engineering college, I naively asked around [to find out] what the best-paying job is. Somebody said CEO. I didn’t even realize the person was being sarcastic. I knew the only way to get to be CEO was to build my own company. Looking back, I’ve never had a business card which said CEO. When I set up One97 Communications, my business card stated my title as EO. My engineering school buddy and one of my first employees, Harinder Takhar, also had the same title. We were both EOs.

I couldn’t get to Stanford or Silicon Valley. Somewhere there was the urge that I should do something worthwhile, but I would have to do it in the Silicon Alley called Delhi. I wanted to build a great company; I wanted to attract the best talent. The internet age was calling. Paytm began offering people searches and went from there into business services, payments, commerce, gaming, content, financial services, and banking.

SR: Are you satisfied with what you’ve built so far?

VSS: Many entrepreneurs are called “overnight success.” I say, “Yeah, my overnight was 19 years long.” We started in the dial-up internet era, where we ran up huge phone bills. We now carry the internet in our pockets. How far we have come! The last 20 years have been the most significant for India. It is an unprecedented kind of change the world hasn’t seen, not even in the U.S. or China. Nowhere else have such a large number of users come online in such a short period of time.

SR: How will India’s digital payment transformation be different from China’s?

VSS: China has two players. We will not have that kind of dominance. India will have four or five players, with a leader, which will have significant market share. Everybody can coexist. Payment is way too huge a problem for one or two players to control.

India is far more competitive. We have neither the best talent nor the best infrastructure, nor the required levels of capital. We have to be far more resourceful. To raise money we have to take a flight out of India and explain our market to investors. Neither the Chinese nor the Americans have had to describe their market to their investors.

SR: Is India changing?

VSS: With low mobile data tariffs, the internet is reaching the corners of India. That’s spawning a huge number of startups in payments, cloud, and even startups that help people file taxes. There is a large local market. Risk capital is available to win the market. We are now grade-A entrepreneurs, not Third World businesses. It is possible to build a business to serve this country and then take it to the rest of the world. These are phenomenal days. Ten years ago, there was no local market, no risk capital, no internet infrastructure, no customers. When we started, it was the very beginning of the internet era of the country. I feel tickled that I am now bracketed with today’s young entrepreneurs of India, like Ritesh Agarwal of OYO [Oravel Stays Pvt.] and Bhavish Aggarwal of Ola [Electric Mobility Pvt. and ANI Technologies Pvt.]. Nobody remembers that I started with old-generation internet businesses.

SR: Competition is building up in digital payments—Walmart, Google, and others whose launch is imminent.

VSS: Rivals are spending huge amounts of money, but none of them have dented our market share. India’s digital payments market share is expanding. In the next five years, India will be a much more digitized country. That’s a good thing. As for rivals spending money, the big giants with the deep pockets never win the war. Microsoft didn’t win the search war. Search didn’t win the social war. Social didn’t win the messaging war.

I can bet that none of the above is going to win the digital payments war. It’s a huge opportunity. There will be many players. This country could produce the payment player which will go on to dominate the world. It will be an Indian player, not a Chinese one. The payments leader of India will build a low-cost, highly scalable model in an extremely competitive environment. The winner here can go and win anywhere.

SR: Why is cash still king in India?

VSS: We’ve had the first phase of India’s digital payments journey with many world players as our rivals. We were the clear leader in the digital wallet phase.

The second phase began with the United Payments Interface, which is the tech backbone linking banks and digital payments players so they can create services quickly and cheaply. Our rivals are using that backbone for person-to-person money transfers rather than merchant payments. Our business model is in merchant payments, in the everyday experience of users paying businesses. That’s our journey now.

Less than 10% of payments made by users to businesses is through digital means. We believe merchants should provide their customers the whole range of options, and that’s what we offer through the Paytm wallet, which accepts cash, debit cards, credit cards, UPI-linked bank accounts, and other wallets. A digital wallet is far more inclusive. Even if a user doesn’t have a bank account, he can do digital payments.

SR: When UPI was introduced, it seemed that digital wallets were going to die.

VSS: In the early days, I had assumed that people would give up on the wallet after you could link a bank account and begin using UPI. But users are still uncomfortable with linking bank accounts. There is low penetration of digital money and low consumer trust. The pecking order in the country is: cash, followed by card, then wallet, and UPI.

We do more than 600 million merchant payments a month. All UPI payments together are not even as big as our wallet transaction numbers. The whole UPI universe has 110 million registered users, but less than 10% of them account for more than 80% of transactions. On UPI, all apps put together have a $150 million monthly payments volume. We have a total of $390 to $400 million volume via Paytm through UPI, other wallets, cards, and cash. After spending billions of dollars, Google Pay and Walmart’s PhonePe haven’t been able to touch us.

SR: How do you enlist merchants?

VSS: It takes time. Shopkeepers need a lot of hand-holding for digital payments, cloud services, and everything else. They are underserved by tech companies. We are currently at 13 million merchants and will reach 25 million by March 2020. It’s all about how many cities, how many shops, how many markets give consumers the chance to use digital payments. We are very visible in India’s main cities. We are now headed to Tier 3 and Tier 4 markets.

SR: To transition merchants to digital payments and other digital services can’t be easy.

VSS: We are offering software where they can create their own store and start selling online. They can build their business’s credit score and access our instant business loans. We have leapfrogged from being a payment company to a complete ecosystem for small and medium enterprises for their software and financial-services needs. Our “Business With Paytm” app is in 10 languages. In this era of zero-margin digital payments, as mandated by the government, we have to make money on additional services such as financial services and cloud services.

SR: Isn’t every digital payments service using cashbacks as a lure?

VSS: Cashbacks are a good thing. They incentivize users and merchants to try out digital payments. Our cashbacks, by the way, are not in cash. They are in the form of movie vouchers, flight vouchers, and so on. Cashback is a strategy for us. We have pushed the Paytm cashback logo a lot more in the last few months.

SR: How have you innovated for users in the smaller towns and semi-urban India?

VSS: We use a lot of data. Rich users don’t value the 20 rupee [28¢] cashback. Our engine understands who values the small sum of money. Our AI is built at Paytm Labs in Toronto. We started in 2014. We have the ecosystem advantage because we can be the one stop for many things. We introduced cancellation insurance for movie tickets. This is a global first. The cancellation value is extremely low, and our AI engine ensures that it’s an extra revenue earner.

Here’s another example: India saves in gold. We allow users to buy infinitesimal amounts of the metal. For example, a user can buy gold for 11 rupees and aggregate. Buying gold is a wealth service we offer everyone. Our gold product has more customers than all wealth management companies in India put together. We have 17 million users.

SR: What will it take to win India?

VSS: Some people still want to pay by card—card transactions are the highest by value. Others want to pay by wallet because they do not want to link their bank account to third-party apps for fear of digital theft. As the market matures, all use-cases as a combined offering makes sense rather than just one. In the countryside, there’s huge fear they’ll get defrauded of their money. Soon as one system grows, fraudsters walk into that system. That is why we have a large investment in setting up a lab in Canada building fraud detection systems. We have 110 people there. We have been lucky so far. We have been working hard. For a payment company like ours, competition does not come from another payment company. It comes from hackers.

SR: What’s the life of an Indian entrepreneur like? We had a tragic suicide recently of the founder of India’s largest cafe chain [V.G. Siddhartha], who described himself as a failed entrepreneur.

VSS: In India it is particularly tough. Entrepreneurship is looked down upon, unlike in the U.S. We are just above Africa markets in terms of per capita income. We have to build a business model for that. Then there are many rules and regulations, sentiments, behavior.

Siddhartha’s suicide is heartbreaking for entrepreneurs like me.

You have to be far more Zen to survive in this country. As I said, if you build in India, you can go build anywhere in the world. What do you think is the first thing an Indian kid learns? That the bus stop is not where the bus will stop.

SR: Is there an IPO round the corner? Some of the most high-profile companies backed by Masayoshi Son, such as Uber, have gone the IPO route.

VSS: Masa has never mentioned the word IPO to me. We will remain private for the next two or three years for sure. I look up to Warren Buffett, Masayoshi Son, and Jack Ma. Their ambition is to build huge impact on their markets, cities, countries, business domains. They are all market share-centric. What I take from them is: First, learn to do one thing really well. Then build the next level of business on top of it. That’s the common thread. We’re not even on the preparation journey for the IPO, which itself takes a couple of years.

SR: Then are you looking to raise funds?

VSS: There is a huge amount of incoming investor interest. People with large-dollar checks are knocking at our doors. Once we figure out the business requirement and get the necessary board OK, we will raise money. We are very well-capitalized for our business model.

SR: Where is Paytm headed in the next few years?

VSS: Paytm is [dominating] and will dominate India’s mobile payments ecosystem. Paytm Payments Bank has overtaken India’s No. 1 mobile bank, state-owned lender State Bank of India. Just like Ant Financial dominates payments in China, Paytm wants to dominate in India. We are getting into insurance and lending. We’ve created world-class tech that can be replicated both in emerging and developed markets. We built payments from the bottom up in Japan with Made in India technology. PayPay [a joint venture among Paytm, SoftBank, and Yahoo Japan] today has 10 million customers. We will go to the Americas and Europe.

Rai is a reporter covering technology for Bloomberg News in Bengaluru.

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Success Story Behind Bhavish Agarwal's Ola Cabs

While the majority of us dream of owning posh vehicles with cool drivers, meet this Indian entrepreneur who enchanted the lives of millions by curating the best online "Book A Ride" service. The mastermind behind one such 'e-commerce' venture gave people relief from traveling by chaotic rickshaws or buses.

Bhavish Agarwal is an Indian entrepreneur and a��co-founder of "Ola Cabs" who hails from Punjab, Ludhiana, and was born on 28th August 1985. He then graduated from IIT Bombay in 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering. He lives in Bangalore now. Apart from working non-stop, he enjoys cycling, playing squash, and owns a photography blog, which shows how much he admires photography. His favorite book includes "Biography of Steve Jobs".

Since Bhavish Agarwal is a savvy tech, he started his own blog as a blogger at Desitech. From 2008 till 2009. Desitech, In loyally hosts content related to tech geek things and is all about Indian start-ups, events, etc. While he was already laddering up the success shield, he kick-started his career with a bang enduring a position with a highly reparative company "Microsoft Research" as a research intern and got restored at a later stage as assistant research for 2 years from 2008 till 2010. At the same time, he got 3 papers published in internal journals by filing 2 patents. Bhavish then soon ditched his job to build an empire of online rental cab service known as "OLA CABS" in 2010 which was a re-branding of his previous venture.

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