Ola Founder Bhavish Aggarwal Registers a New Company: Report The startup is likely to be in the artificial intelligence space
By Teena Jose
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Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder and CEO of Ola Electric is reportedly to get into a new business, which is likely to be in the artificial intelligence space, according to an ET report, citing two top sources aware of the matter.
As per the documents sourced from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs by business intelligence site Tofler, Aggarwal has registered a new company named Krutrim SI Designs this April. The report added that he and Tenneti Venugopala Krishnmurthy are the only two directors of the new company, which will soon expect to close funding from investors.
Aggarwal's flagship company ANI Technologies runs Ola Cabs; Ola Electric Mobility, which runs the electric-vehicle business; Ola Electric Technologies, which focuses on research and development; Ola Financial Services, which was fully acquired by ANI Technologies. Krishnamurthy is a director on the board of all these companies and an additional company, Ola Electric Charging Pvt Ltd, which is a subsidiary of Ola Electric Mobility, added the documents.
The new company Krutrim does not have Ola in its registration name, said the report. The sources, as cited in ET, say Aggarwal may have received investment commitment for this new AI venture from Matrix Partners, the venture capital firm which is an early investor in Ola Cabs
According to the report, it appears Aggarwal, who is in the middle of a fundraise at Ola Electric and is charting a course for its public listing next year, will parallelly work on getting an AI venture off the ground. The report suspects the company would be based on AI because Bhavish Aggarwal had recently visited the major hub for AI computing systems chip manufacturers, Taiwan.
Additionally, in February Aggarwal made a statement on AI that it is a massive technology tool for increasing productivity and India should take a lead in adopting such technologies, disapproving the notion that embracing such technologies would result in job replacements. According to him, the application of AI would result in the creation of new jobs as it did happen at the time when computer technology was introduced in India.
Earlier this week, Bhavish Aggarwal also announced the launch of Ola premium cab service in Bangalore, promising zero cancellation and no operational hussles.
