OlaCabs, commonly known as Ola, is an Indian transportation network company. Ola started as an online cab aggregator in Mumbai, now based out in Bangalore and is among the fastest growing businesses in India.[citation needed] It is working on the business model used by the likes of behemoths like Uber_(company).
It was founded on 3 December 2010 by Bhavish Aggarwal(currently CEO) and Ankit Bhati. By 2014, the company has expanded to a network of more than 200, 000 cars across 85 cities. In November 2014, Ola expanded to incorporate autos on-trial basis in Bangalore.[1] Post the trial phase, Ola Auto expanded to other cities like Delhi, Pune and Chennai starting December 2014.
In December 2015, Ola expanded it’s auto services in Chandigarh, Indore & Jaipur. Ola was valued at$5 billion as of September 2015.Ola provides different types of cab service ranging from economic to luxury travel.[2] The cabs are reserved through a mobile app. This cab service supports both cash and cashless payment options with Ola money. It claims to clock an average of more than 150, 000 bookings per day and commands 60 percent of the market share in India.[3] November 2014 Ola also started on-demand auto rickshaw service on its mobile app in Bangalore, Pune and few other cities.
In October 2015, Company claimed to have 80 percent of the taxi market share in India, Ola started more services such as Ola Cafe, Ola Store, Ola Shuttle, Ola Money and Ola Corporate.[4]Ola has been in the news all through this year. From raising big bucks(details below) at growing valuations(the company is currently valued at around$5 Bn) to launching a slew of different offerings such as its ride sharing service called Ola Share in Delhi NCR to its Shuttle service called Ola Shuttle. The company also engaged in multiple partnerships tostrengthen its business
Strategic partnership with China’s Didi Kuaidi, US-based Lyft and Malaysia’s GrabTaxi, which will allow passengers to book rides on any of these four services using just one app.
Partnership with customer-based chat services company, Haptik, which will allow users to book Ola cabs through instant messaging on the Haptik mobile app.
Partnership with MapMyIndia.