India's largest ride-hailing company Ola's founder Bhavish Aggarwal denied the merger of the Bengaluru-based company with American counterpart Uber on Monday. He told reporters that people who know me know that I will never acquire a loss-making business.
A month ago, Aggarwal had taken to Twitter to clarify rumors about a possible merger between Ola and its American counterpart Uber. We are very profitable and growing well. If some other companies want to exit their business from India, they are welcome to! Aggarwal tweeted while quoting a news report, we will never merge.
Ola is one of the most profitable ride hailing companies in the world with a strong balance sheet. We are the market leader in India and are much bigger than other players. The merger of any kind is completely out of the equation. India has a lot of opportunities to unlock when it comes to mobility services. As a strong vertically integrated mobility company, we will consolidate our position by any acquisition in the Indian market, if at all, an Ola spokeswoman said.
In the past four years, Ola and Uber were in talks about a possible merger. In 2018, Japanese conglomerate Softbank was consolidating its cab-hailing companies across the world. The SoftBank Vision Fund had a 26 per cent stake in Ola and a similar stake in Uber back then. Two years after selling its Chinese operations to Didi Chuxing, the sale of South-East Asian operations to Grab fueled the talks that SoftBank was willing to merge Ola and Uber in India.