Bhavish Aggarwal Responds To MapMyIndia’s Notice, Calls Company ‘Opportunistic’

Bhavish Aggarwal, founder of Ola Electric, termed MapMyIndia's recent allegations of improperly using its mapping data to develop Ola Maps “opportunistic” and said the company will respond to the allegations publicly. 

CE Info Systems Ltd., the parent company of MapMyIndia, issued a legal notice to Ola Electric, alleging the company cached and saved MapMyIndia’s data and reverse engineered a licensed product in violation of their agreement.

“On the MapMyIndia notice, we have put out a public statement that we will definitely respond to it publicly. We think it is very opportunistic of them and Ola Electric is not even in the maps business. We are a group; we have three different entities in the group—Ola Apps, Ola Electric and Ola Krutrim—and Ola Electric is not in the map business,” Aggarwal said, responding to the allegation while speaking at a press conference in Bengaluru.

MapMyIndia contends the agreement explicitly prohibits the co-mingling and reverse engineering of MapMyIndia's data and products. According to it, this breach has not only undermined its proprietary technology but also misled users regarding the origins of Ola Maps' data. 

In order to gain access to MapMyIndia's mapping data, Ola Cabs first signed a multi-year licensing arrangement with the company in 2015. Ola Electric added MapMyIndia's services to its S1 Pro electric scooter in 2022. However, Ola Cabs declared earlier this month that it has switched from using Google Maps to its own Ola Maps for operational purposes.

Aggarwal drew attention to this change by revealing on social media platform X (previously Twitter) that it has saved almost Rs 100 crore in costs annually.