Ola regulars were in a for pleasant surprise on Friday, when the cab aggregator’s app revealed a brand new category — Ola Rooms that allows customers to spend the night in, across the country, for just ₹249 a night.

A YouTube video on Ola Rooms that trended on Twitter for three hours talked of rooms that come to your doorstep.

The room would let you wake up to the view of your choice — lake, city or park view — all by parking appropriately the previous night. Plus you get a breakfast at any restaurant in the city.

Ola Rooms, which co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal called the “latest revolution to hit Indian roads”, turned out to be Ola’s way of saying ‘April Fool’. However, for a company that has launched and withdrawn many other services such as Ola Café and Ola Store, Ola Rooms could very well have passed off as yet another innovation.

All Fool’s Day allows you to pull a prank, make fake claims, spread hoaxes and play practical jokes.

And start-ups had a field day capitalising on the tradition to bond and engage with each other and customers, dropping the walls of enforced camaraderie at the workplace.

B2B e-commerce marketplace Shotang started the day with a poster that said, “Elevator not functioning today”, forcing employees to take the stairs up to the third floor. Beer cans which are strictly not allowed in office were placed on each table — only, they contained fruit juice.

Morphed photos of employees who have not taken the company’s fitness workshops seriously were put up to show them how they would look in future if they didn’t get serious.

“HR decided on motivating, funny pranks to go with our fitness-oriented culture at work that fosters team bonding. It worked as everyone got into the spirit and played pranks on each other,” said co-founder CEO Anish Basu Roy.

Founder CEO of financial tech start-up ClearTax, Archit Gupta, invited his team of 75 to discuss the company’s revenue targets, goal setting etc over high tea, as April 1 marks the beginning of the financial year. Gupta cut and shared a 3 kg pineapple fresh cream cake.

Day of hoaxes “The look on my team’s face was priceless when they dug into the liberally salted cake that had zero sugar. Everybody realised they had been fooled and broke into laughter, visibly easing the tension associated with the meeting,” he recalled.

Sudarshan Purohit, co-founder CEO of residential rental management start-up Zenify.in, watched his senior management team’s expressions change from shock to anger to pure bewilderment when he delivered news of the company having to lay off a few managers.

“I told them to decide amongst themselves who should step down. But, when we met in the evening they asked me to take the call, as they felt they had all performed well. I ended the tension and told them that our business had grown and threw a pizza party for everyone,” said Purohit.

Journalists were not spared either. BusinessLine received personally addressed mails with “Most Urgent Final Notice” on the envelope from LICE Insurance Corporation of India.

A quick look revealed a final renewal reminder, followed by a note that said: “Happy April Fool’s Day from fin-tech start-up Hummingbill Inc, founded by Adam Walker, a New Yorker who moved to Bengaluru”.

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