Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal ‘rubbishes’ reports of merger talks with Uber

Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal has rubbished reports in a section of media about the company being in talks with Uber for a possible merger.

Bhavish Aggarwal said in a tweet that Ola is very profitable and growing well and if some other companies want to exit their business from India they are welcome to.

“Absolute rubbish. We’re very profitable and growing well. If some other companies want to exit their business from India they are welcome to! We will never merge,” he said responding to a media report that talked of the cab aggregator platform being in talks for a merger.

Ola Electric had on Thursday signed an agreement with the Ministry of Heavy Industries for local manufacturing of advanced cells in India under the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme.

Ola Electric is the only Indian EV company selected by the government under its ambitious Rs 80,000 crore cell PLI scheme, receiving the maximum capacity of 20 GWh for its bid in March.

“Today, 90 per cent of global capacity for cell manufacturing is in China, and to reverse this import dependency locally manufactured cell technology is key. The ACC PLI scheme will be instrumental in making India self-reliant and localising the most critical aspects of the EV value chain,” Bhavish Aggarwal had said, according to a release.

“At Ola, our roadmap to develop cell technology and manufacturing is vigorously progressing; making us a stronger vertically integrated mobility company across - products, mobility services and tech,” he added.

Ola had recently unveiled India’s first indigenously developed lithium-ion cell, NMC 2170 and is investing heavily in developing core research and development to create indigenous advanced cell technologies.