‘Opportunistic’, Bhavish Aggarwal on MapMyIndia’s legal notice

Ola Electric founder Bhavish Aggarwal has responded to the recent controversies surrounding its mapping solution, and the legal notice from MapMyIndia. 

"It is opportunistic of MapMyIndia; there are opportunistic players everywhere. We will respond to them at the right time,” Aggarwal is quoted as saying by MoneyControl.

Earlier this month, the Bengaluru-based firm launched Ola Maps as an alternative to Google Maps. The firm also shifted its operations to its in-house mapping service by transitioning from Google Maps. 

CE Info Systems, the parent company of MapMyIndia, sent a legal notice to Ola Electric for allegedly copying the former’s data. In the legal notice, MapMyIndia claimed that Ola Electric breached the license agreement. In 2022, Ola Electric onboarded MapMyIndia to offer navigation services for its S1 Pro electric scooter.

As per MapMyIndia, Ola was prohibited from co-mingling the licensed product with another similar competing product and indulging in any reverse engineering or making any attempt to extract/ copy the source code from any API of the licensed product or any related software.

MapMyIndia alleged that Ola Maps cached, saved its data which is a violation of the licensing agreement signed in 2021. The Delhi-based firm also added that it will initiate appropriate legal action, both civil as well as criminal, against Ola Electric.

Ola, however, refuted the allegations made by MapMyIndia. 

“…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,” an Ola Electric spokesperson had said.

Separately, Ola Electric is also set for the stock market debut on August 2. 

On the upcoming IPO, Aggarwal said, "We wanted to ensure that the pricing was set at a level that would generate significant excitement among investors." 

Last week, media reports suggested that Ola is going to drop down its plan for car production. However, Aggarwal clarified that the firm did not confirm or deny plans to pause car production.