Then there’s the question of retaining drivers without incentives. An independent fleet operator in Bengaluru says, “Both Uber and Ola have brought in customer convenience, but drivers joined them only for the incentives. The moment that stops, drivers leave.” To compensate, Ola is helping drivers with medical and accident insurance and has tied up with State Bank of India to offer them car loans, but “many drivers are moving to Uber because it is giving better deals,” says the operator. Uber also offers lower fares than Ola in many cities. However, Subramanian says Ola has at least a two-year advantage because of its headstart over Uber.

When Singh discussed the new ventures with drivers in January, they were surprised. “Their questions ranged from ‘Why are you doing this? Ola is a taxi service, isn’t it?’ to ‘What’s in it for me?’” Ola’s effort is to get drivers more engaged and loyal to the brand. But that might be a tall order, given old habits.

It also has to find a way to deal with hostile taxi unions that see cab aggregators as a threat. In July, taximen in Mangaluru protested before the city administration, alleging Ola was trying to monopolise the business. In fact this is one thing that unites it with Uber, which has been flayed by angry cabbies across the world, from London to Paris to Mexico.
In the near term, Ola faces another daunting ask: filling a slew of new management roles. It can learn from Wipro, one of India’s early conglomerates, which transitioned from making vegetable oil (in the ’40s) to consumer products and industrial hydraulics (’70s), before entering the personal computers market—eventually growing it into the IT services flagship—in the ’80s. “We had to explain to everyone what we wanted Wipro to be,” recalls Pratik Kumar, CEO of Wipro Infrastructure Engineering and former group HR head for Wipro. “The top managers had to chase a new breed of talent—entrepreneurial persons who could take ownership and run. Chairman Azim Premji himself spent a lot of time hiring managers across levels,” recalls Kumar, who finishes 25 years at Wipro next year.

Ola’s journey to build a management team beyond its founders has just begun. In February Aggarwal poached Sunit Singh, head of design at ClearTrip, a company he admires for its user experience. He also snagged Amit Mathur as head of talent acquisition from VMWare to focus on tech hires, separating it from business staffing under Rohit Munjal who came from GE Healthcare. Both Mathur and Munjal report to Yugantar Saikia, an experienced hand from software analytics firm FICO. Then there’s Arvind Singhatiya, formerly of Metro Cash & Carry, who joined as head of public policy, government relations, and legal. Another star hire is Sundeep Sahni, former managing director of Lazada Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s top e-retailer.

But luring talent is a relentless, high-stakes game where Flipkart and Snapdeal have proven hard to beat. And unless Ola can build a continuous stream of leaders for the new services, things will slow down. Already, the rollout has been fraught with delays. In parts of Delhi, for instance, the Café button on the app has been promising delivery in “15 minutes” since its launch, but upon clicking, you are told that the service is still not operational.

THESE CONCERNS SEGUE INTO THE CORE COMPETENCE VS. DIVERSIFICATION DEBATE. In the startup world, the sacred norm is going after a niche rather than spreading too wide. That’s why Internet pioneers like Info Edge launched new businesses years after strengthening their main business. In an unrelated interview (see page 34), Intel’s South Asia managing director Debjani Ghosh sums up the risks. “India is like a toy shop” for tech companies given the sheer number of addressable challenges, says Ghosh. “How do you prioritise where you want to play? That’s going to be one of the toughest questions.” To be sure, Ola is not the only startup on an expansion spree. Far smaller ones, like grocery-delivery players BigBasket and Grofers, have started dipping into niches such as electronics and personal care. The closest comparison for Ola is possibly Paytm, another five-year-old unicorn. Founded by Vijay Shekhar Sharma and backed by Alibaba, it claims 80,000 users in its mobile wallet business, and forayed into m-commerce last year. Sharma says as of June, users bought goods and services worth $1.5 billion in gross value from 9,000 active merchants.

“All this was not possible in 2011-12 when investors were not pumping in money at the same pace,” says an investor who doesn’t have a stake in either Ola or Paytm. “While Paytm has been dominant in payment, its attempt to crack e-commerce was seen as a crazy move less than a year ago, but not any more. Similarly, over the next few years, one successful experiment could give a quantum boost to Ola’s growth.”

In fact investors in mature public companies seem to appreciate the idea of cross-pollinating businesses. The philosophy: It’s better to re-invest money than let it idle in times of growth. For instance, last July, when Info Edge announced that its board had approved a qualified institutional placement (QIP) worth Rs 750 crore to invest in 99acres.com, the share price closed at Rs 697. A month later, when an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders approved the QIP, the share price had inched up by 12.24%, Rs 782.51. And finally, on the date of the QIP announcement, the share price closed at Rs 888.11—a juicy 27.39% higher than July and 20.02% higher than the QIP issue price.

What does Aggarwal make of all the frenzied attempts to predict the future of his unicorn? From his boyish countenance, it is difficult to say if he takes any of it seriously. “We are still a startup,” he says matter-of-factly, “we need to do many more things.” The memory of the aborted cycling trip should keep him in line.

Bhavish Agarwal

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