OLA, an online cab aggregator, had riders in 250 cities across four countries. In India, nobody really owned what the ride itself actually felt like, how clean it was, how safe it felt. 3M had materials and technology that could help, through its Car Care division, but no real foothold inside a ride hailing company. Two companies had overlapping interests but no relationship to act on it.
This wasn't something 3M could just pitch on the strength of a good idea. It needed a case strong enough to get in front of OLA's CEO directly, and it had to be built entirely from inside 3M, with nobody on OLA's side helping shape it before the pitch even happened.
Neither company needed to invest in anything new. The partnership was already sitting inside what both companies already owned, nobody had mapped it as one thing yet.
I worked with 3M's VP of Car Care to look at the actual assets both companies already had and define a business model for a joint partnership. That meant mapping out the real pain points for both riders and driver partners, walking through the whole journey, and shaping a concept solid enough to take straight to OLA's leadership.
The solution was pitched directly to OLA's CEO, framing it as a B2B opportunity for both companies.
The pitch turned an unowned gap between two companies into a real, revenue relevant channel. 3M got a new commercial application for its Car Care materials inside one of India's biggest ride hailing platforms. OLA got a differentiated, safety focused rider experience it could actually market. Once it was approved, the pilot ran in Bengaluru and scaled to 5 cities, handled by 3M and OLA's own teams.