Aug 09, 2024 12:33 PM IST
Bhavish Aggarwal adds almost $1.2 billion to his wealth as Ola Electric lists at price band at ₹76 a share.
Ola Electric founder Bhavish Aggarwal is set to cement his position as world’s youngest billionaires after his company’s public listing. The 38-year-old will add almost $1.2 billion to his wealth as Ola Electric lists at the price band at ₹76 a share, giving the entrepreneur a net worth of $2.3 billion, as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
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Ola Electric is yet to turn a profit since it was founded in Bengaluru in 2017. The firm made a net loss of 14.7 billion rupees in the financial year ended March 2023. Bhavish Aggarwal said, “Three years ago when we launched our product, I believe that’s when the EV story began.”
Ola Electric’s journey
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Two years after being founded, Ola Electric became a unicorn owing to early funding from SoftBank and Tiger Global Management as Bhavish Aggarwal said that he aimed to build the world’s leading “urban mobility EV company.” The company encountered several problems in the beginning as shortly after it debuted its electric two-wheelers in 2021, it saw a major setback when Ola scooters were caught up in a spate of high-profile EV battery fires in India. The company recalled more than 1,400 scooters in the wake of the incidents.
Bhavish Aggarwal’s net worth
The Ola Electric founder featured on Bloomberg’s wealth index of the world’s top 500 billionaires before the listing as well- being one of only seven under the age of 40 across the world in the list.
‘India’s Elon Musk’
Bhavish Aggarwal welcomed Tesla’s decision not to invest in India, saying in a post on X (formerly Twitter), “This is Tesla’s loss, not India’s.” In an interview last year, he said, “Tesla is for the West, Ola is for the rest.”
All of his firms are in tech-led sectors, creating data that can be used by his other businesses, Nitin Pangarkar, associate professor of strategy and policy at the National University of Singapore said, adding, “But the attention given to the businesses could be an issue.”
“He’s like India’s Elon Musk. Brash and abrasive and all that. But that hasn’t stopped Musk from succeeding,” Nitin Pangarkar said.
