Ola’s Aggarwal To Move Workloads From Microsoft Azure To Krutrim Cloud Amid LinkedIn Dispute

Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal on social media said that his company will migrate its entire workload from Microsoft’s Azure to its own cloud service, Krutrim. This decision comes as part of Aggarwal’s broader critique against what he perceives as Western tech practices conflicting with Indian cultural values.

Aggarwal’s criticism was particularly directed towards Microsoft-owned professional network LinkedIn, alleging that the platform deleted his posts without notification. Taking to social media platform X, Aggarwal voiced his discontent, stating that Ola will transition its workload out of Azure to Krutrim cloud within the next week. He also criticised LinkedIn’s imposition of what he termed as 'woke' ideologies through its artificial intelligence tools.

“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 कृत्रिम cloud within the next week. It is a challenge as all developers know, but my team is so charged up about doing this,” Aggarwal wrote in his post.

In his social media posts, Aggarwal spoke on Ola’s commitment to diversity and gender inclusivity, highlighting the company’s initiative of running a women-only automotive plant. He argued against the imposition of Western diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices in Indian culture, particularly regarding the issue of pronouns.

Aggarwal also addressed the need for Indian tech platforms, highlighting the importance of Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) principles. He stressed the significance of DPIs like Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), and Aadhaar in the Indian context. Aggarwal argued that a DPI-based social media framework would be more aligned with Indian values and governance, with Indian law serving as the primary guideline rather than corporate policies. 

He further called for data ownership to be in the hands of creators rather than corporations, stressing the need to prevent monopolistic control over data by big tech companies. Aggarwal committed to working with the Indian developer community to build such a framework, to provide an alternative to Western-dominated social media platforms.

Ola also extended support to developers willing to migrate from Azure to other platforms by offering a year's worth of free cloud usage.