The Founders: – Bhavish Aggarwal: Education: B. Tech in Computer Science from IIT, Bombay. Prior work experience: Worked in Microsoft Research, Bangalore for 2 years, right after college. While trying to chase his dream of entrepreneurship, he started an online holiday and tour planning service on the side, before changing that into OlaCabs. – Ankit Bhati Education: Dual Degree(M.Tech+B.Tech) from IIT Bombay. Prior work experience: Worked in a number of start ups including QED42, Makesense and Wilcom, before joining OlaCabs. The OlaCab story: While trying to keep his holiday and tour planning business afloat, Bhavish had to travel from Bangalore to bandipur, for which he rented out a car, which ended in a very bad experience. The driver stopped the car in the middle of the journey and demanded a renegotiation of what Bhavish was paying. After being refused, he proceeded to abandon him enroute his destination. This is when he realized how his plight was probably similar to a lot of
This is a story explaining how adversity is met differently by different people. Asha’s father placed an egg, a potato, and some tea leaves in three separate vessels with boiling water. He asked Asha to keep an eye on the vessels for ten minutes. Once these ten minutes were over , he asked Asha to peel the potato, peel the egg and strain the tea leaves. Asha was left puzzled. Her father explained , ‘Each of these items was but in the same circumstance of being in a pot of boiling water. See how they’ve responded differently. The potato is now soft, the egg is now hard, and the tea has changed the water itself. We are all like these items. When adversity calls we respond in exactly the way they have. Now are you a potato, an egg or are you tea leaves?’