If US-based Uber is rolling out incentives for drivers and passengers, Ola is also adding new segments to lure more traffic.While Ola is growing its services apart from the main taxi-booking services, Uber is going all guns to dethrone Ola from India’s largest taxi-booking service.
Reportedly, both Ola and Uber have around 2,50,000 drivers registered on their networks, which is excluding auto-rickshaws and black-and yellow taxis.
As Ola wants to raise valuation of about Rs 33,000 crore, investors are interested in knowing its growth strategy.
"Ola's focus on other services such as grocery, which are not closely related to its core competence of providing peer-to-peer ride-sharing, may prove to be a liability. On the other hand, Uber India has been focusing on building its core business by expanding to multiple cities, stricter drivervetting, and opening customer service centres," Sunil Wattal, who teaches management information systems at Temple University in the United States, told ET.
Uber might over take Ola as the former introduced cash payments also, making payment options flexible.
Experts point out that Ola’s expansion has been tremendous with presence in over 100 Indian cities and generating maximum of its business from 22 cities, where Uber also plies.
Meanwhile, Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal had earlier said that he had plans to enter new phase of growth with innovations and other large scale new ideas.
At the same time, Uber India’s President Amit Jain wants to concentrate on its core business.
"Since we entered the India market (in 2012), we have essentially been in investment mode. We have already invested tens of millions of dollars into the market as we scale our operations and capabilities," said Jain.
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