Ola Auto now in 24 cities across India; targets 2 million bookings a day by 2017
- 12 more cities get Auto-rickshaws available on-demand from the Ola app
- Ola aims to cross 2 million daily auto-rickshaw bookings on its app by 2017
Bangalore, 13 April 2016: Ola, India’s most popular mobile app for transportation, today announced the launch of auto-rickshaws in twelve new cities across India, taking its Auto Rickshaw booking service to a total of 24 cities across the country. The new cities that were launched include fast growing Tier 2 markets like Bhopal, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Kota, Surat, Madurai, Guwahati, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Jodhpur, Visakhapatnam and Udaipur. The 24 cities in which Ola Auto is currently present, alone have over 3 million auto-rickshaws, doing well over 30 million rides every single day. Ola is targeting to serve at least 2 million daily rides by end of 2017, through its app by getting on-board hundreds of thousands of auto-rickshaw drivers on its platform over the year in these cities. In the past one year, Ola has brought a convenient hailing experience for users and predictable and continuous demand for driver entrepreneurs, helping them earn as much as 40% additional revenue on a daily basis. The lack of constraints on supply and the burning need to bring in convenience and efficiency for users and drivers respectively, mark the potential for a local solution like Ola Auto to grow deeper into more markets serving many millions of users.
The conventional process of hailing an Auto-rickshaw is known to be cumbersome for citizens. With Autos now being available to hail from the Ola App, users can request a ride at their doorstep within minutes, with the assurance of travelling at metered fares. Customers can track their rides on the app and also share their ride details in real-time on a live map with friends and family. Ola Autos are available 24×7 in all the 24 cities, with an ETA of less than 5 minutes. Ola has also launched a new billing system that will record the details of the trip including time of booking, distance travelled and fare payable, either in cash or through Ola Money. Users can request a bill on completion of their ride from the Ola app and pay for their rides with Ola money.
Nitesh Prakash, Senior Director, Operations at Ola said, “We are delighted to bring Ola Auto to all of urban India across these 24 cities. Autos as an ubiquitous mode of transportation in Indian cities, already serve hundreds of millions of users everyday. By bringing them on the Ola app, we are transforming the mobility experience for users and improving the revenue opportunity for auto driver-partners with a positive shift in on-demand consumption. With auto-rickshaws available in all of these 24 cities, we are also widening the choice of urban mobility for citizens over and above our current offerings like Micro and Mini in these markets, taking us closer to our mission of building mobility for a billion Indians.”
Every auto on the Ola platform is powered with a GPS enabled smartphone with the Ola app for drivers allowing driver-partners access to continuous demand from customers around them. Auto driver-partners are notified of booking requests on their smartphones and are given navigation to reach the customer’s doorstep on accepting a booking request. The GPS enabled smartphone also helps customers track their ride in real-time. Ola’s in-app SOS feature and an in-app feedback mechanism allows for a consistent experience for users. Every Auto driver-partner on the Ola app goes through a KYC online and offline dual verification and training across behavioral, etiquette and technology to make the ride experience seamless for customers. The Ola app for auto-drivers is available in 8 Indian languages including English, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu making it extremely convenient and user friendly for local drivers to use. Ola has over 100,000 auto rickshaws registered on its platform across 24 cities and plans to launch in more cities in the coming months.