OLA Cabs’ founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal on Friday (July 5) said that the ride-hailing startup has fully exited Google Maps and moved to its in-house navigation platform, Ola Maps.
“After Azure exit last month, we’ve now fully exited google maps. We used to spend INR 100 Cr a year but we’ve made that 0 this month by moving completely to our in-house Ola maps!” said Aggarwal in a post. Adding to this he further mentioned that they will also add more features like street view, NeRFs (neural radiance fields), indoor images, 3D maps, drone maps, among others.
Ola’s switch to its own mapping service, Ola Maps, follows two recent trends: moving its cloud storage to Krutrim after a disagreement with Microsoft, and developing its own tech stack.Ola’s move to its own platform is a cost-cutting measure aimed at boosting profits. They reported a significantly reduced loss this year, while revenue grew substantially.
On the other hand, Ola Electric, the electric vehicle arm of Ola, is getting ready for an IPO. In June, they got approval from SEBI to go public with a fresh issue of shares worth INR 5,500 crore and an offer for sale of up to 9.51 crore shares.
