A widespread and a rapid development in science and technology coupled with the recent trend of start-ups taking over the world; with India witnessing an exceptionally indispensable increase in the past few years, has added a lot to snugness of mankind. Online marketing taking over all other offline sectors did not even care to spare the taxis on streets. With online taxi companies like Uber and Ola coming to the fore front providing online cab services, and helping its end users to book a cab sitting within the four walls of his room without fording his cosiness, is rather one of the finest ideas that the world has ever been gifted with. These cabs are much more secured, are available at affordable prices and that too with a greater ease. Booking a cab online has become the new cool in cities these days and is possibly the best way for people to commute. So lets make a complete analysis of the survival of the people’s favorite, whether it’s Ola or Uber.
But with the emanation of aggrandized number of online taxi companies like Uber, Ola, Meru , TFS with the list continuing, stiffness in their competition has become two to three folds with every single company coming up with providing better service and a recommendable travelling experience to their riders and an incentive to their drivers. Amidst them, the antagonism between Ola and Uber has become so brittle that they have become the talk of every city in India.
A Brief Introduction
Founded in the year of 2009 in March, by Travis Kalanick and Garret Camp, Uber is a Multinational online transportation network company that operates on a mobile application. The valuation of the company strikes at $62.5 billion and is considered as one of the best tech start-up across the globe. It has its global presence in 360 cities covering 67 countries, with India being its second largest hub after America. Staring off at Bengaluru in the year of 2013, it has already outreached 18 cities in India and is planning to invest in a handsome amount of $1 billion by the end of 2016, wherein its renowned rival Ola is giving it a one to one battleship.
Ola is rather an Indian based start-up firm, started by Bhavish Agarwal and Ankit Bhati, the two alumni of IIT Bombay in December, 2010. Regarded as one of the well-funded start-ups in India, it raised approximately $900 million solely in 2015 and is presently valued at over $5 billion. It has its presence in around 102 cities in India.
Now, let us delve deep into the various aspects, where the two of them have offered such a stiff competition that remains unmatchable in the recent times.
Market Captured
A survey which was conducted by whichApp portrays that the number of downloads that the mobile App of Ola received in India runs twice the number of downloads of Uber App; the former claiming to have over 25 million users in India. But the number of assiduous users of Ola has dripped down to 12% while that of Uber has seen a hike of 3%. Uber may have a global recognition with its services spreading over 58 countries but Ola too is coming at the front desk to enter the global market and has proven itself impressive by tying up with Didi Kuaidi of China, the loftiest app based cab provider, which has surpassed even Uber in the Chinese market and also with Lyft, the biggest emulator of Uber in US. This elegantly opened up the travel path of its users in China, US and south-east Asia. Didi valued at over $20 billion, was also amidst one of the members of the consortium that invested $500 million in Ola in 2015, which also happens to be one of the biggest backers of Ola. Ola has also been successful in grabbing hold of “Taxi for Sure”, yet another app based taxi provider.
Programs
“Ola Pragati” is a special program launched by Ola with a clear vision of getting drivers on board and registers with the company. The program aims at providing easy loans from SBI to the drivers to buy cabs and drive for Ola. Also the rating which the drivers get from their riders makes them subject to additional beneficiary like fuel subsidy, higher incentives and even scholarships for their kids.
Uber parallels Ola with its own program named “Uber Dost”, providing loans, health care benefits, free insurance, and education subsidy for kids etc.
Rates
Initially Uber had set out with only Mercedes vehicles serving as their cabs, which naturally succumbed to only high-end users but eventually they realized that in order to grab a larger market they need to shift their focus to low-cost rides. This eventually resulted in the increase in the number of hired cabs, because of their low costing. With fares submerging down, people taking the number of rides increased, increasing the net income.
As such, the offers provided by both of these giants differ from each other. While Ola has a space for pre-booking, the “Ride Later” option, in its App, Uber has a free cancellation scheme for the cancelling the bookings.
Analysing their fares for all the various types of cars (ranging from hatchbacks to sedans to XUV’s), brings into picture that the lowest fare for a cab is in Kolkata with UberGo starting at Rs 45. In increasing order, the per kilometre charges is Rs.6 in Chennai, Rs.7 in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi and Bengaluru and Rs.8 in Mumbai. At the same step, Ola Mini offers Rs.7 per kilometre in Kolkata, Rs.10 per kilometre in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad and Rs.11 in Mumbai. In this subject Uber leads Ola in attracting more customers. However, the surge rate for both of them is yet unpredictable and cannot be fathomed. Besides this, both of them have the same charges for the travel time; ranging from Rs.1 to Rs.2.5 depending on conditions.
Recents
In this heated emulation across the nation, Ola had brought in a service, aiming at providing cabs for the business sector in January 2016. The fares of cabs for the corporate sector has been kept same with an eye at aiding business firms to save about 60% on their travel costs thus a clear attempt to bring itself into limelight. The payment here is made directly to Ola by the company on behalf of their employees, thus saving the complexity of reimbursement in the entire process, which otherwise would have resulted in the hassle of scheduling pickups and hefty billing and payment process.
At par, Uber has its own “Uber for Business“, which had started in July 2014 and is also available in India at present. Uber has been successful in registering over 50k companies, which are inclusive of several companies having Indian origin. On 3rd of March this year, a new category of services had been started by Uber under the name Bike Taxis, which met with a counter-attack when Ola came up with the same idea and that too within a span of 24 hours. Again Ola launched its e-Rickshaw and bus shuttles, earlier this month. Uber on the other hand came up with its auto-rickshaw services under the name “UberAuto”, operating in Delhi region. Recently both of them have also provided their users with the facility of cab-pooling.
Technology
Though both Ola and Uber runs on an android and iOS application to allow its users to book a cab, the system used by Ola seemingly needs to improve by a subtle margin, especially with regard to its navigation maps. Recently several users have complained about its problem of inaccurate location of the cabs. Even when a cab is 30 minutes away from one’s location, the displayed time is “5 minutes” thus misleading the users and inculcating negative vision about their services. Again one needs to put in a lot of feat to direct the drivers to the correct location. At times, the Ola App needs Wi-Fi to be enabled even while using mobile data. These loopholes are serious matters of concern for Ola.
Uber using the same platform provides a better service along with a better and clearer map vision. Cabs hardly take more than five minutes to arrive. This is because Uber hires the best ones. Most of their employees are ex-investment bankers and developers from Amazon, Microsoft or Facebook. The app they use is flawless and the service provided is exquisite.
Court Case
Now here lies a major concern. While on one hand the competition seems to be healty for the customers, the cut-throat competition has turned into rivalry.
On 23rd of March, 2016, Ola had been summoned to the Delhi High Court by Uber on the allegations of false bookings of rides, claiming that Ola landed up creating 93,000 false accounts to book cabs, which as Ola had put it was nothing but a counterattack on the part of Uber to defame it because Ola had reported the court about the diesel plying Uber vehicles in Delhi, which otherwise is prohibited in the NCR region. The court has decided to look into these cases on September 14 (for Uber) and on April 18 (for Ola). The court cases being the latest barrage between the two rivals have left at stake a market which is worth nothing less than $15 billion. The action Uber had taken against Ola was also heaved at by its American rivals, namely Lyft and Gett.
Ola has also been thundered by riders for generating incorrect bills, where extra amount is charged for extra time which the person has not actually traversed. Though the extra amount charged is refunded but that’s only after a hefty procedure of repeated calls and emails, with proper explanation about the concerned issues. Again in certain cases, the drivers take a longer route to fill in their pockets. Such misconduct adds nothing but dishonors the name of the company. On the other hand Uber is mostly free from such mismanagement. Despite the fact that Uber was defamed due to the molestation case in Delhi, it has eventually managed to cope up back in the Indian market. Both of the companies have tried to safety precautions in the operation of their cabs after the incident.
In terms of the market captured in India, Ola seems to have out-weighted Uber, but with regard to the quality of services provided, Uber gets a higher score. It’s still a matter of debate as to who is presently ruling the market of cabs. The Start-up Premier League between Ola and Uber will continue and would be very interesting to watch out.
Which one of the two will end up dominating the streets? Do let us know your views by commenting below.
