Blog

In the wake of MapmyIndia‘s lawsuit against Ola Electricfor allegedly misappropriating its data, Bhavish Aggarwal, founder and CEO of the electric vehicle startup, responded by calling the move “opportunistic”. 

“It is opportunistic of them (MapMyIndia)..There are opportunistic players everywhere. We’re not even in the map business, but such behavior is widespread across the industry. We will respond to them at the right time,” said Aggarwal, during a press briefing for the announcement of the company’s upcoming Initial Public Offering (IPO).

The legal notice was filed just before Ola Electric’s IPO set for Friday.

Earlier this week, CE Info Systems, the parent company of MapMyIndia, accused Ola of copying its proprietary data by mixing and reverse-engineering the licensed product, which was agreed upon in a 2021 agreement.

The legal document accused Ola Maps of copying API (application programming interface) and SDKs (software development kits) data from one of MapMyIndia’s clients.

“Ola Electric wishes to address the recent claims made by CE Info Systems Limited (“CE Info”) in relation to the alleged issues with Ola Maps vis-à-vis MapMyIndia and reported in news media. We would like to state unequivocally that these allegations are false, malicious and misleading. Ola Electric stands by the integrity of its business practices. We will suitably respond to the notice shortly,” a spokesperson at Ola Electric said.

Ola Electric has announced a price range of Rs 72-76 per share for its eagerly awaited IPO. The offering features a new issue of equity shares worth Rs 5,500 crore, along with an offer for sale of up to 84 million shares.

(Disclaimer: Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, is an independent director at Ola Electric.)