Ola, the taxi sharing app, was supported by the soft bank and DST global, which has launched a shuttle service to expand its taxi sharing operations, it has aimed to cost rides below $1.
At the beginning this service was available in only two cities, Bangalore and Gurgaon and then the service improved to 500 shuttles in 100 routes and in the next few months the service will be available to almost all the cities in India.
Ola has achieved this by increasing its funding by around $400, in account of which the valuation of the company has increased to $2.5 billion.
The raid-hailing service Uber, is taking action to expand its business over many countries, but, Ola is focused to improve its business only in its motherland, India.
In Asia, India is one of the fastest growing economies, the country’s population would be 1.3 billion and it has greatly evolving middle class people, in which most of the population owns the smart phone and they have disposable income.
The Vice President of the new initiatives at Ola, Sundeep Sahni, said that, the shuttle service will be more suitable for the commuters, who think of taking their own cars or bikes as the alternative.
The rides in the Ola will be less than $1that is the prices will be less than Rs.66, whereas, the other private taxi services offers rides at $4 to $6.
For sharing the vehicle space with other 12 to 20 people, the company provides the Air conditioning facility, WiFi, and other in-vehicle entertainments.
The co-founder of Ola, Bhavish Agarwal, said that, many Indians use their personal transports to go to work from their home. The company has decided to provide the comfortable and safe journey to the commuters with just the single tap from their smart phones.
This shuttle program will be efficient for many people and it tries to enable mobility for billion of people in India.
The first launched shuttle service includes 20 routes and 100 shuttles. The shuttles will not be there in large number like the normal cabs. Instead, they will be in limited numbers in the starting stage and they may in large numbers if the service has good response from the people.
The shuttle is the kind of sole traders, that is the service is operated by the own vehicles of the users, they will be linked with the Ola to find the customers for the rides.
On the other side, passengers can use the Ola app to book for the shuttles, track the shuttles through the map and they can pay for the ride through the app.
Future estimation
Ola’s aim to expand the shuttle service is one of the key factors for improving the business at the higher rate. Ola’s funding prices were nearly $680 million; this total is obtained when Ola increased $400 million. This action was taken to improve the company aggressively and to bring higher scale for the company. Around $50million is invested in the new shuttle project.
The common Ola app services include traditional taxis, auto rickshaws and some of the private vehicles. Ola services are active in about 100 cities in India. The company serves 750,000 plus 250,000 rides everyday plus many vehicles registered on the app and adding about 1500 on the average. It took reference from the Uber and moved to the other different areas to ride hailing like food delivery.
As like Didi Kauidi in China, Ola’s competition with Uber is predictable that what may occur in future. A survey says that, among the total number of cabs on the streets, Ola cabs covers the 80% of the cabs, Ola’s closest rival, Meru, covers about 12% of the total number of cabs on the roads. So Ola is the biggest competitor in India for many leading raid –hailing services in the world, such as, Uber.
Meru the competitor of Ola, launched its carpooling service in the mid of 2015, TaxiForSure which was owned by Ola, also launched its carpooling service. RedBus, the raid-hailing service offers the rides between the cities and it also plans to launch the shuttle services to commute people and also for making services as user friendly. None of these services are shuttle bus services.
No raid-hailing companies offer the shuttle services in the scale that Ola offers. Ola’s shuttle service will be the first of the kind, so, the Ola has the great advantage towards the shuttle service and they can grow faster.
Ola’s car pooling in Delhi
The CarPool features allow the people of Delhi to request for the ride in their own private car with the help of the Ola app. With the Carpool feature, the Delhi passengers will take the advantage of the routing algorithms. The passengers can match the other passengers who are travelling by the same route as theirs and they can have the ride together. Ola’s Carpool service in Delhi is a voluntary service.
The Government of Delhi has announced for the first time such car pooling services, and these services started from January 1, 2016. The Delhi government has decided to implement this car pooling feature for reducing the pollution and also the traffic congestion.
This friendlier feature of Ola, allows the users to create a custom list on the app, and to add the user’s friends with their mobile numbers, and this CarPool allows the users to travel with their friends on the custom list and this option in the app is aimed to provide privacy for the users.
Not only with their friends, hosts also have the possibility to travel with the outsiders also. The safety features of Ola are, tracking the ride, ride sharing details, emergency contacts, SOS, in-trip feedback and all time customer support. All these features are available in the CarPool also.
How does the CarPool work?
In the Ola app, CarPool appears as the separate category in Delhi region. Using this feature, users can prefer to share their rides in their private car. For the first time, the hosts have to register themselves on the app, by entering their vehicle details, then they have to click “I am driving” button on the app, then they have to enter their destination.
Users who demand for a ride can select “I need a ride” button and then they have to mention the location where they have to be dropped. Then, Ola app will use the algorithms to find the people on the user’s friend list or the people who have requested to travel on the same route.
Ola app will then group people in the way that the user has requested for that is to share a ride with friends or with the outsiders.
Once this is finalized, the car owner will receive notification from the Ola app with an alert and navigation to the pickup location. Similar to the Ola app, there is a new app in the market called the Ridecy.
It is a customized app that is developed with a responsive interface and is available on both the Android and iOs platforms.
The Category Head of Ola, Mr. Ishan Gupta, said that, Carpool is one of the major innovations towards the continuous mobility in the Indian cities.
CarPool brings convenience, economy and pleasure of travelling with friends and also the ability to choose the driver to drive the user’s own vehicles.
As there is a higher focus given to the modifications in the raid-sharing platform, all these ideas like CarPool come up. CarPool was introduced after the Ola Share and Ola Shuttle.
Day by day the company is trying some ideas and implementing the best ideas for the betterment of the mankind and also to meet its competition.
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