After MapMyIndia accused Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal of plagiarising its data to build Ola Maps, Aggarwal today said he’ll deal with “opportunistic players” at the “right time”.
“It is opportunistic of MapMyIndia; there are opportunistic players everywhere. We will respond to them at the right time,” Aggarwal was heard saying by Moneycontrol.
Ola launched Ola Maps as an alternative to Google Maps and transitioned its operations away from Google Maps to its in-house mapping service. CE Info Systems, the parent company of MapMyIndia, sent a legal notice to Ola Electric, claiming that the company had copied MapMyIndia's data.
As per MapMyIndia, Ola was prohibited from combining the licensed product with any similar competing product, and from engaging in reverse engineering or attempting to extract or copy the source code from any API of the licensed product or related software.
However, Ola cached and saved its data, which violated the licensing agreement signed in 2021. The Delhi-based firm also stated that it will take appropriate legal action, both civil and criminal, against Ola Electric.
In 2022, Ola Electric partnered with MapMyIndia to provide navigation services for its S1 Pro electric scooter.
Later Ola's spokesperson denied accepting the allegations made by MapMyIndia.
The spokesperson said Ola would like to state unequivocally that these allegations are false, malicious and misleading. He added that Ola Electric stands by the integrity of its business practices and will suitably respond to the notice shortly.
Ola Electric will also go public on the stock exchange on August 2.
Social Media Reaction:
Internet users are showing negative reactions to Ola CEO's latest remark.
One user wrote, "I know Rahul Verma of MapMyIndia for many, many years and let me assure you that he is not an arrogant prick like the guy who stole from them. Also, I’ve seen a lot of the stuff MMI builds and quality of GIS data they have and yeah, they are a proper Indian success story!"
Another user commented, "The OLA guy is super arrogant. One of my friend who was a tech wizkid , filed patents with OlA was harresed by him once he decided to Leave."
A third user replied, "It's very obvious. Ola hasn't done any mapping on its own. Probably incorporated a lot of Google Maps data as well"