Ride-hailing firm Ola today (July 29) denied any merger talks with its US-based rival Uber in India.
Earlier in the day, a source-based report in The Economic Times claimed that Ola chief Bhavish Aggarwal had met top Uber executives in San Francisco and suggested that the two firms were headed for a merger.
Refuting the claims, Ola’s chief executive took to Twitter to dismiss any such development and trash the insinuation.
“Absolute rubbish. We’re very profitable and growing well. If some other companies want to exit their business from India they are welcome to! We will never merge,” Aggarwal said in his tweet.
Uber, too, denied any such plan. “That report is inaccurate. We are not, nor have we been, in merger talks with Ola,” it said in a statement.
The companies’ respective denial of merger talks has come at a time when they are both struggling and at the same time pumping in money to keep up in the highly dynamic and competitive Indian market.