Ola Cabs to now use Ola Maps instead of Google Maps, founder Bhavish Aggarwal says
Ola exits Microsoft Azure and Google Maps to use its own in-house technologies from Krutrim, seemingly to eventually achieve vertical integration.
Ola Cabs will be using its own in-house Ola Maps instead of Google maps, Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal announced in a post on X (Formerly Twitter), adding that the company would save ₹100 crore in the process.
“We used to spend ₹100 cr a year but we’ve made that 0 this month by moving completely to our in house Ola maps!” he wrote.
“Check your Ola app and update if needed,” he added.
Also Read: Ola's Bhavish Aggarwal on Tesla not investing in India: ‘Their loss, not ours'
He said Ola Maps will get many new features soon, such as street view, NERFs, indoor images, 3D maps, and drone maps, and that it would be available on Krutrim cloud.
What is Ola's Krutrim AI and Krutrim cloud?
Krutrim, Ola's AI company, is now a startup unicorn that was established in December last year. It launched its cloud services called Krutrim cloud just in May this year, and had 2,500 developers already sign up to use its services.
What happened before Ola stopped using Google Maps?
Ola's decision to exit Google Maps comes after the company departed from using Microsoft's cloud service, Azure last month, and shifted to using its own in-house cloud storage called Krutrim cloud, after Microsoft-owned LinkedIn removed his post on what he felt about the usage of pronouns.
Also Read: Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma talks about Paytm, expectations from budget
Ola had been using Microsoft's Azure for seven years, since 2017.
Ola's push for vertical integration
Vertical integration is when a company controls its own supply chain, rather than depending on external or third-party suppliers.
With these two moves, Ola has been seemingly pushing to become more independent as a company, reducing its dependency on suppliers. Apart from this, the company also is investing into research on solid-state batteries for its electric scooters, planning to use them by next year.
Also Read: Passenger vehicle sales fall 7% in June as heatwave curtails showroom visits
