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Cab booking service, Ola has announced its expansion in 24 more cities. Counted among one of the leading mobile app for cab bookings, Ola now has its services in over 50+ cities and thus makes it the first cab-booking app to be present pan-India across all major metros, cities and towns.
Ola has also released the some data that offer insights into the scale and velocity of the growth of India’s most popular app for cab booking:
Expansion
The Ola app now has over 60,000 cabs across the 50+ cities where it operates. This is more than the fleet size of the entire organized point-to-point cab sector in the country as it existed. The company has added over 15000 cars to its platform in just the last three months and has launched operations in over 34 new cities during this period! It is currently adding over 1000 cabs to the platform everyday. Ola plans to expand to over 200 cities by the end of 2015.
Bookings and Revenues
Ola currently serves over 200,000 rides every day translating into a run-rate of over 6 million rides a month. The company has grown at the rate of over 40% month on month in 2014 and continues to grow at the same rate in its current scale.
Mobile and Wallet Usage
Currently, over 80% bookings received are through the Ola mobile app. Ola’s app is the most popular in its category across both Android and iOS app stores.
The company’s mobile wallet, which was introduced in October 2014 has seen a phenomenal response. The First time Ola users who have recharged their Ola money wallet are growing at the rate of 40% per month. At the same time, regular users who use the Ola Money wallet now book 30% more than before and over 80% users who have used the wallet have recharged it multiple times in the past few months. Over 40% bookings are paid for, using Ola’s mobile wallet.
Related: The Evolution Of The Indian Taxi Market – Comparing The Biggies
New Initiatives
Ola has also begun making auto bookings available on its platform in beta mode across 6 cities in India – Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Pune and Ahmedabad.
Another new category that is currently in beta mode is ‘Ola Pink, cabs driven ‘by women, for women’ in Bangalore. The iconic Kaali-Peeli’s of Mumbai are already available to book from Ola’s app since October 2014 .
Safety & Security
After the Uber rape case, Ola has now installed an additional layer of GPS in all the cars on its platform over and above the existing layer of mobile GPS. While Ola already has strict KYC verification of drivers in place, police verification and antecedents’ verification for all drivers on the platform have already been initiated with concerned authorities. On the app, Ola has recently released an SOS button for customers, which when activated, will send out all ride details in real-time including GPS coordinates to pre-set friends and family members of the user via SMS and email.
Driver Entrepreneurship
Ola is currently focusing on strengthening its driver-side supply-chain as well as ramping up its technology platform. Over 70% of the drivers on the Ola platform are now entrepreneurs themselves. The company has set up a fund of INR 100 Cr. to enable drivers buy their own cars and turn driver entrepreneurs. Over 15,000 drivers, across the country, have already benefitted from this program.
“We are growing at an exponential rate in every market that we are present in today and plan to be in a couple of hundred cities by the end of this year. The one common trait we see across all cities that we operate in is the need for reliable and convenient personal transportation in the city. By bringing driver partners and citizens closer through our mobile platform, we have eased out the transportation hassles for everyone. The interest we have seen among the driver community in every city for the Ola brand is also overwhelming. We are excited to be in over 50 cities now and this number is growing week after week!” said Pranay Jivrajka, VP Operations, at Ola.
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