How is Ola becoming an Indian replacement for Microsoft?
Introduction
The journey of Ola from its inception to its current state has indeed been remarkable. Every gen-Z can remember how one used Ola to book Auto. The ease and convenience it brought to everyday transportation needs were truly revolutionary. But if you see what Ola is today , then indeed it is subtly different from what it used to be. And if you see the curve of the sectors that Ola is now involved with , you can definitely tell that, for sure, it is not linear but rather some sort of polynomial.
Ola started its journey in 2011 with the aim of revolutionising India’s transportation sector with on demand auto services. In 2017, it partnered with Microsoft to leverage Azure cloud services for its “Ola Play” platform. At this time, it had given some hint that, for sure, Ola does not want to remain a company that just offers auto services. And today, in 2024, Ola is involved in electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, and cloud services. Ola has certainly come a long way in expanding its technological offerings beyond its original focus on auto services. In today’s article, we will see how Ola is becoming an Indian replacement for Microsoft .
How is Ola becoming an Indian replacement for Microsoft?
To understand why I said that Ola becoming an Indian replacement for Microsoft , we will have to first understand the major offerings of Microsoft.
So , Microsoft has a wide variety of interconnected offerings . Operating systems, AI services, Microsoft Search (Bing), and cloud services are the most prominent offerings. If we talk of Microsoft Azure only , it contributes to 46% of income. So , roughly, we can say that Microsoft cloud service provider Azure is one of the prominent businesses of Microsoft. Now let us analyse what Ola is trying to offer. If we look closely at Ola’s offerings , we can definitely see that, apart from electric vehicles, that is currently Ola’s primary business. One thing that Ola’s CEO, Bhavesh Aggarawal, has been most vocal about in recent times is Ola’s Krutrim. Ola’s Krutrim has two major offerings.
1) Large Language Model (Krutrim AI)
2)Krutrim Cloud .
And these are also the two major offerings from Microsoft. With these now, you will have some idea of the statement that I made, ” How is Ola becoming an Indian replacement for Microsoft?” Let us dig a little deeper and try to see how Krutrim Cloud is trying to take away the business of Microsoft Azure, at least in India.
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If you follow X (formerly Twitter), then recently you must have noticed Ola CEO, Bhavish Aggarawal fight with LinkedIn. If not, then let me tell you in brief that it all started with a tweet from Bhavish criticising LinkedIn’s business practices. He had made a post on LinkedIn, which was removed from LinkedIn citing policy violation issues. Bhavish then took to Twitter to call out LinkedIn for their actions. In short, the whole conflict revolved around LinkedIn’s AI referring to Aggarwal using “they” instead of “he,” prompting him to question the AI’s neutrality and accusing the platform of pushing a political agenda. If you want to read more about this incident, you can visit here.
Bhavish Aggarwal, after this incident, announced that he will be moving Ola’s entire cloud workload from Microsoft Azure to Ola’s Krutrim . He further agreed that, for sure, it will not be an easy job, but yes, it will be an interesting one to do. The main announcement that he did was for developers and businesses . He announced that Ola ‘s Krutrim Cloud will be providing 1 year of free cloud services to those who will be moving from Microsoft Azure to Krutrim Cloud . Obviously, a condition will be there that the business will not shift to Microsft after one year.
It seems like an interesting move, and it will be interesting to see how this whole incident turns out. And Krutrim Cloud will gain some traction after this. But one thing is for sure: Indian businesses will now understand the need to adopt cloud technology and cybersecurity measures that are politically neutral and, for now, Indian.
Conclusion
I truly hope that one day, for sure, I will see an Indian company giving tough competition to foreign companies , be it Microsft, Apple, or any other company. It would be a proud moment for our country to see an Indian company leading the way in technology on a global scale. For now, I am really seeing Ola as a potential replacement for Microsoft and truly wish them the best.
I hope I was able to pen down my thoughts clearly . If you have any points of discussion feel free to join our WhatsApp Chat.
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