Self-drive car sharing service ‘Ola Drive’ launched: All you should know

SoftBank-backed Ola intends to host a fleet of 20,000 cars by 2020

Ride-hailing firm Ola on Thursday unveiled ‘Ola Drive’, a self-drive car-sharing service. The service has been initially rolled out for users in Bengaluru with Hyderabad, Mumbai, and New Delhi to follow shortly.

To build and scale up the service across several Indian cities, Ola ride intends to host a fleet of 20,000 cars by 2020, 50 per cent more than the fleet size of the entire industry put together. Initially, the SoftBank-backed company plans to invest about $200 million for the new platform and aims to increase this investment up to $500 million in the next couple of years, said the firm.

The development would further deepen Ola’s battle with US rival Uber to capture the mobility market in India as well as take on early self-drive car-rental players such as Mahindra-backed Zoomcar and Revv, which counts Hyundai Motors among its investors. With over 200 million subscribers, the company said that ‘Ola Drive’ has the largest user base for a car-sharing service in the country.

“Ola has been deep-rooted in India’s mobility landscape, building technology-enabled transportation solutions for millions of users. Our expertise in serving millions of customers through a large fleet of vehicles across 250 plus cities has been instrumental in making ride-hailing a norm in India,” said Arun Srinivas, chief sales and marketing officer, at Ola. “Ola Drive has been built on the same DNA and will play a transformative role in defining India’s car-sharing market in the next decade.”

Flipkart's PhonePe ties up with Ola, bets on micro-apps for growth

Through the AutoPay feature, users can link their credit or debit card for an Ola ride in the PhonePe app once, and the ride-fare would automatically be paid at the end of every ride

Flipkart-owned digital payments firm PhonePe has tied up with homegrown cab aggregator Ola, where users can book a cab or an auto using a micro-app built on its payments platform.

The company has gone live with three such micro-apps, including that of redBus and Metro services, and plans to go live with 5 to 10 more in the ongoing quarter.

“Ola’s scale and reach, topped with our AutoPay feature will enable greater convenience and control to our users while making payments seamless,” said Rahul Chari, co-founder and chief technology officer, PhonePe.

ALSO READ: Flipkart's digital payments arm PhonePe crosses 100-million user mark

The company, which has built its payments platform primarily on top of the National Payments Corp of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), crossed the 100-million user milestone last month.

Through the AutoPay feature, users can link their credit or debit card for an Ola ride in the PhonePe app once, and the ride-fare would automatically be paid at the end of every ride.

The company has already integrated mobile wallets such as FreeCharge and Jio Money on its platform to give more options to users.

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