Ola's Bhavish Aggarwal to enter AI space, registers new company

This comes at a time when Ola Electric is close to raising funds of around $300 million for its expansion plans.

Ola's co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Bhavish Aggarwal has registered a new company named Krutrim SI Designs, which will focus on Computer Programming and Artificial Intelligence space, data sourced from the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) showed.

"The date of incorporation is April 15, 2023, with a paid-up capital of Rs 1,00,000," The document sourced from MCA said.

Aggarwal has registered the company along with Krishnamurthy Venugopala Tenneti, who is one of the board members of ANI Technologies Ltd -- which owns Ola Cabs and Ola Electric.

ET Prime was the first to report the developments.

Reports also suggest that Aggarwal is in talks to raise funds for the newly registered company.

Ola did not comment on the development.

Sources Moneycontrol spoke to said that the new startup will help develop and support the operations of Ola Electric.

"The new company is into computer programming, it must be something to do with chip making and other allied technology, " a source privy to the developments said.

This comes at a time when Ola Electric is close to raising funds of around $300 million for its expansion plans and to meet other corporate needs, sources close to the company said.

The fresh round of fundraising at Ola Electric comes amid expectations that Ola Electric would break even soon and achieve profitability.

Aggarwal has been talking about making chips for EVs in India and is in the process of making chips in-house. EV firms have been sourcing chips from Japan, North Korea and China.

Ola already makes battery packs in-house and is even increasing its capacity to make more battery packs.

For FY2021 Ola Electric’s losses nearly doubled to Rs 200 crore as per the company’s MCA filings. The company clocked operational revenue of only Rs 86 lakh and employee benefits made up close to 70 percent of total expenses.