How Ola used guerrilla tactics to stop Uber's growth in India

India's biggest ride-hailing firm Ola countered American giant Uber's "carpet bombing" entry into the country with guerrilla warfare by going into nooks and corners to gain a significant market share, its founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said.

"Yet, we held on to our market share and even today we have 2:1 market share against our competition. They had to really out spend but were never really able to gain dominant market share in India," Aggarwal said.

(In pic: Travis Kalanick, co-founder, Uber)

He likened the company's strategy to guerrillas stating they will "fight the nooks and corners" and win in the long term. Aggarwal recounted that when Uber entered India in 2013, Ola was a "tiny company" operating in two cities with a mere half a million dollars in the bank. "We did not have a huge head start against them in India ... (however) we were clear about our strengths... we know India better, we ended up building our business model customised around Indian reality in every aspect," he noted. (In Pic: Ola/Facebook)

Ola had looked beyond the top five, six cities and now has expanded into almost 200 cities and towns in India. "It is not easy running a business in Bihar and Eastern UP, but we had to learn how to do that. That is one example of how we had to customise our business model and execution to fight against competition and against Uber in particular..." he said. (In Pic: Ola/Facebook)

Ola, which has expanded operations to countries like Australia and the UK, is all set to take the competition with Uber to the next level as it has recently announced setting up an Advanced Technology Centre (ATC) in San Francisco Bay. (In Pic: Ola/Facebook)