Born in Ludhiana, Punjab, in 1985, Bhavish Aggarwal is a self-made Indian entrepreneur, the co-founder of Ola Cabs, and the visionary behind Ola Electric. His upbringing was rooted in a middle-class family that valued education (his father was a doctor, his mother a homemaker), instilling in him a keen interest in technology and problem-solving. He attended the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, graduating in 2008 with a Bachelor of Technology degree in Computer Science and Engineering.

After graduating, he worked briefly as a research intern at Microsoft Research India, contributing to patents and publications related to web search and data mining. Despite a promising corporate career, Aggarwal harbored entrepreneurial ambitions. The genesis of his massive idea was rooted in a personal experience: he was frustrated by the poor service and exorbitant fare charged by a taxi driver during a trip from Bangalore to Bandipur. This negative experience became the catalyst for disrupting India’s entire urban mobility landscape.

Bhavish Aggarwal co-founded Ola Cabs with Ankit Bhati (also an IIT Bombay graduate) in December 2010 from a small rented office in Mumbai. The company started as an online cab booking service that connected customers with local taxi drivers through a mobile app—a revolutionary model for India at the time. Ola Cabs quickly scaled to dominate the Indian ride-hailing market, becoming one of the largest mobility brands in the country.

Aggarwal's defining strategic pivot came with Ola Electric. Recognizing that the future of urban mobility required a clean energy solution, he pursued a massive, multi-billion dollar ambition: fundamentally altering the way India moves its citizens with electric vehicles (EVs). This vision went beyond just making scooters; it was about creating an integrated EV ecosystem—battery technology, hypercharging networks, and lithium-ion cells, all designed and manufactured in India. This shift positioned Aggarwal as a visionary industrialist, leading India’s EV revolution and securing his multi-billion dollar fortune.

Bhavish Aggarwal’s social impact is structural and environmental. The success of Ola Cabs transformed urban transport, providing millions of customers with reliable, affordable mobility and creating massive employment opportunities for drivers.

His pivot to Ola Electric is a huge commitment to environmental sustainability, aiming to reduce air pollution in India’s major cities by replacing internal combustion engine vehicles with EVs. His commitment to making battery technology and EV components in India is a major structural contribution to the national economy and technological self-reliance, ensuring high-value manufacturing jobs stay within the country.

Bhavish Aggarwal maintains the functional, high-energy style of a modern Indian tech founder. His attire is consistently casual and simple, favoring comfortable shirts, often with the Ola logo, and trousers. His aesthetic is anti-corporate and focused on execution, reflecting the intense pace of the Indian startup ecosystem.

Residing in Bangalore, his luxury is the security of his multi-billion dollar fortune, which affords him the ability to command immense industrial and technological resources. His life is defined by a relentless mission to solve India’s largest infrastructural problems, from mobility to clean energy, a true industrial visionary of the digital age.