Bangalore based on-demand shuttle service ZipGo has had a stormy relationship with Bangalore’s RTO. Late last year, the transport authority had raided ZipGo’s offices claiming that its services were illegal. ZipGo had gone off the roads, only to make a quiet return a few days later. This time ZipGo’s in trouble again, and its founders are appealing for help.
Before there was an Ola or Uber, there was Auto Raja, Chennai’s first autorikshaw aggregator service. However unable to compete with the bigger, if newer players like Ola and Uber, in a highly competitive and valuation led market, Auto Raja to shut shop soon.
Cab-hailing app Ola has now rolled out Ola share in Chennai and Kolkata. Ola has recently launched the Share feature wherein up to three users can share an Ola cab ride. The user can either choose to ride someone from a pre-created social group or with anyone, on the same route, using the Share option.
Ola has launched Ola corporate, an enterprise solution to corporate cab bookings.
With Ola corporate, employees would be able to book a cab for official visits, with the click of a button and have the option to have it expensed directly to the company account, instead of needing to have it reimbursed later.
Mumbai taxi drivers haven’t been the biggest fans of cab hailing companies Uber and Ola. Seeing their business slip away from beneath their feet, they’ve resorted to protests, strikes, and political posturing to get these companies out of Mumbai. But their efforts have been in vain – consumers have responded with their feet, and Ola and Uber have made rapid inroads into the city.
But now Mumbai’s iconic “kaali-peeli” taxi owners are trying to take on cab hailing startups at their own game.
Over a 1000 Ola drivers protested against the company in Bangalore yesterday. The drivers alleged that they hadn’t been paid the incentives they’d been promised for driving over New Years’. They also were unhappy that the money that had been deducted from their accounts towards the payment of their car loans had not reached the banks.
Ola has launched its auto hailing service in Chandigarh. It is the 7th city in the country to have the service, after Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Pune were added in October 2014. The company intends to add two more cities by the end of the year.
While advertising through billboards, hoardings and usually any offline methods is considerably more expensive ( read: up to a million bucks for a months’ spot on a prime location billboard) than online advertising, flush with VC funding, most of the hot startups wouldn’t mind shelling out the dough to stand out from the clutter. And just as well. It makes perfect sense to not only capture the ready online audience, but also onboard and engage a potentially huge and captive offline audience on your platform.
On-demand shuttle services had been seen by many as a way to ease India’s growing traffic and pollution problems. By operating on popular routes at peak hours, these services took cars off roads and also provided consumers a cheaper alternative to cab hailing companies. Over the last year, several startups emerged in the area, including ZipGo, RBus, and Shuttl, while cab hailing giant Ola had also thrown its hat into the ring, launching Ola Shuttle.