Ola Cabs Rebranded To Ola Consumer; Ride-Sharing Service Ola Share Relaunched

Making a slew of announcements during Ola Group’s annual event ‘Sankalp’, Ola Cabs CEO and founder Bhavish Aggarwal announced the rebranding of Ola Cabs to Ola Consumer. 

In its new avatar, Ola Consumer will offer a host of consumer services to make ecommerce more accessible, affordable and efficient, according to Aggarwal. 

“At Ola Consumer, our aim is to ensure that every consumer has access to the best products and services without barriers of traditional commerce. To further this goal, in the last six months, we have progressed beyond mobility and powered Ola Consumer with technology innovations, redefining commerce for India while delivering more value to our consumers, with a fair and efficient ecosystem,” he said. 

In his address, Aggarwal said that the company will address multiple consumer issues via Ola Consumer. Firstly, he announced the relaunch of ride sharing service Ola Share. The service, which allows users to get cheaper rides by sharing them with others, will go live in Bengaluru today and will be scaled gradually. 

Under the service, Ola said that trip deviations would be limited to less than 20 minutes and a maximum of two people can avail a shared taxi under the model. 

The company has also launched a loyalty programme, Ola Coin, in Bengaluru. Under this, users transacting on Ola platform will get personalised loyalty benefits which can be redeemed on across mobility, ecommerce and logistics services of Ola. 

To eliminate high intermediary costs, the company is looking to double down on its partnership with ONDC. “ONDC is the UPI moment for ecommerce in India. Ola is an early partner of ONDC and we will aim to scale ONDC across India,” Aggarwal said. 

The company claims that its food and grocery delivery on ONDC surpassed 40K orders per day in Bengaluru during its pilot in 2024. In a bid to penetrate the segment deeper, Ola Consumer will offer one year of free Krutrim Cloud for all ONDC suppliers, applicable for startups and SMEs, under a fair usage policy. In addition, D2C brands will also be given one year of free access to Krutrim Cloud. 

Meanwhile, the company also launched a credit platform, Ola Credit, today. Under this, Ola users can get access to low cost loans, Aggarwal said. For this feature, the company has partnered with Tata Capital and Incred.

Further, the company also launched Ola Pay, which uses UPI on the Ola app to pay for rides, food, and groceries.

Aggarwal said Ola Consumer will also intensify its efforts to electrify last-mile logistics to bring down logistics costs by about 50%. 

“With a consistent focus on sustainable mobility solutions and providing a backbone to ONDC operations, Ola Consumer plans to drive cost synergies by electrifying delivery logistics and reducing logistics costs,” the company said in a statement. 

Besides, with an aim to aid in brand discovery on Ola Consumer, the founder announced the launch of an AI shopping copilot to personalise shopping experience. The copilot is live on the Ola app as of now. The company said that the AI copilot will help users connect with social media and other apps in a bid to create a more integrated digital shopping experience.

Aggarwal also unveiled Ola’s new innovation, fully automated dark stores and fulfilment centres under the Ola Consumer banner. He said that the new dark stores, whose prototype was showcased at the event, will look to revolutionise the warehousing space that supercharges the commerce supply chain. 

“The company already has partnerships with several large FMCG and D2C brands, including ITC, Marico and Bombay Shaving Company for efficient and automated warehousing operations, elevating logistics to reduce manual wastage and high costs of storage,” the statement said.

Besides Ola Consumer, the Ola Group also made a slew of new announcements for Krutrim AI and Ola Electric.