Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal Criticizes LinkedIn, Microsoft for 'Bullying'
Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO of Indian ride-hailing company Ola, has openly criticized LinkedIn and its parent company, Microsoft, for what he perceives as enforcing Western cultural norms and 'woke' ideology on Indian users, particularly regarding the use of gender pronouns on the platform. Aggarwal's comments came after LinkedIn removed a post of his that discussed gender pronouns, an action he viewed as an attempt to silence his criticism.
In response to his post's deletion, Aggarwal expressed his dissatisfaction on social media, accusing LinkedIn of bullying and suggesting that the platform was trying to cancel voices that disagree with its policies. He extended his critique to Big Tech's influence on cultural and ideological practices, advocating for the development of an indigenous Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) social media framework by the Indian developer community.
Aggarwal also announced that Ola would be migrating its workloads from Microsoft's Azure cloud service to its own Krutim cloud, as a step towards technological self-reliance. Additionally, he offered other companies a year of free cloud storage on Krutim if they chose to move away from Azure. This move underscores Aggarwal's push for strengthening the Indian technology ecosystem and reducing dependence on foreign platforms.
