Ola is now looking one of the world’s largest companies in the eye, and matching it step for step.
Ola has further reduced its Ola Maps pricing in response to Google announcing lowered prices. Google had lowered its prices days after Ola had announced Ola Maps, and said that the lowered prices would be applicable from 1st August. But just a day after Google’s announcement, Ola has announced price cuts of its own, and says that Ola Maps will now be 50 percent cheaper than Google Maps for large customers.
“As promised, here’s our response to Google Maps’ ‘belated’ price cuts,” Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal posted on X. “It’s time we build world class alternatives to big tech giants and empower Indian innovation! I’m very excited to announce a further reduced pricing structure and our future product roadmap for Ola Maps Krutrim,” he added.
“Starting today, our pricing would be:
– 5M FREE API calls/month for ALL. This will cover almost all startups in India! – 50% of Google’s reduced prices for larger volumes
– 2 years FREE for anyone signing 3+ year commitment
– 3 years FREE for startups & SMBs on ONDC
– While all main APIs are supported by Ola maps today, we will be feature complete for all kinds of APIs, SDKs and niche use cases by Dec. Roadmap attached,” Aggarwal declared.
Aggarwal also shared a price list of Ola Maps services. While Ola Maps had been free for the first year when it had launched last week, it is now free for 2 years for customers who commit to using the service for 3 years. For smaller users, Ola Maps is giving away its service for 2 years without any commitments.
It has turned out that Ola is now engaged in a price war with Google, which is worth over $2 trillion, and is one of the most valuable companies in the world. It’s an unlikely situation for Ola to be in — Ola thus far didn’t compete with Google, either with its ride hailing service, or through its electric 2-wheelers. Ola however had ended up making its own maps product to save the money that it paid to Google for using its services, but once it realized it was able to save Rs. 100 crore per year from the switch, it figured that it could let other developers use the maps. It then launched Ola Maps on Krutrim cloud, and gave it away for free for users for the first year. This made Google sit up and take notice, and Google cut prices of its own Maps product in response. But just a day later, Ola has cut the prices of Ola Maps again, and has made its product again significantly cheaper than Google. These are still early days in the price wars, but the very fact that a homegrown Indian company is forcing a global giant to dance to its tunes might in itself be a bit of an epochal moment for India’s startup space.