Bhavish Aggarwal Vs Microsoft: Ola Claims Transition To Krutrim Cloud From Azure

Just over a week after Bhavish Aggarwal said that Ola, Ola Electric and Krutrim would be moving to a native cloud computing platform from Microsoft’s Azure, the Ola and Krutrim founder has now claimed that the companies have completed the transition. 

Aggarwal claimed that Ola has completed the migration and its spending on Azure has now reduced to zero. He also invited other companies to exit Azure and move to its Indian stack. 

“Will be working with everyone to get onto our cloud services over coming weeks,” the founder wrote on X. 

The founder further added that it has brought over 2,500 developers on board who will be working to get companies onto its cloud platform over the coming weeks. Aggarwal had earlier claimed that Krutrim will offer a year of free cloud usage to any developer switching to Krutrim Cloud from Azure. 

The migration comes in the background of Aggarwal’s clash with Microsoft-owned LinkedIn after his post was flagged for violating the social network’s content policy. Aggarwal had posted about AI using gender-neutral pronouns, and raised concerns about so-called ‘pronoun illness’. 

While his post was widely criticised by many others, Aggarwal seems to have stuck to his guns. 

On May 11, Aggarwal on X wrote, “Since LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and Ola is a big customer of Azure, we’ve decided to move our entire workload out of Azure to our own Krutrim cloud within the next week. It is a challenge as all developers know, but my team is so charged up about doing this.” 

Aggarwal said that Ola and Krutrim will build a digital public infrastructure for social media with Indian developers and abide by Indian law. He further added that this data will be possessed by the creators and not the business.

Earlier this month, Krutrim announced the opening of its cloud platform to enterprises, researchers and developers, and announced the release of its Android app.

Both Ola and Ola Electric are looking to go public in the near future. Ola Electric filed its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with SEBI in December 2023 for an IPO worth INR 5,500+ Cr.

On the other hand, Ola Cabs is expected to file its DRHP with SEBI for a $500 Mn IPO by July. 

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