Ubering In On Ola!

Uber is global, slick and hip. But our desi Ola is still the leader on home turf. This is rapidly changing as Uber noses ahead with a more focused strategy

- Ayushman Baruah

Are you going to pick me up or should I uber it?” That or “Say Ola to your driver,” are part of everyday conversation today as taxi aggregator services become more deeply entrenched into our bustling cities. So disruptive has this model been that people now think twice about buying a car, a fact admitted to by Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra recently when he said that Uber and Ola are the biggest potential threats to the traditional car industry. “We are changing consumer behaviour and dissuading them from buying their second car,” says Amit Jain, president of Uber’s India operations.

And Uber may well talk. It has marched into city after city across the world, brazenly stared down its many problems and refused to blink first in the face of trouble.

Cut-throat Competition

But make no mistake. The taxi aggregation business isn’t easy and has sparked off a cut-throat rivalry between the two dominant players in a market which has grown from $5 billion in 2009-10 to $9 billion in 2015-16, as estimated by Rajiv K. Vij, founder of Carzonrent, a Delhi based car rental service.

Ola came first, in December 2010 and Uber followed three years later in October 2013. But the two are so neck and neck in competition today, you wouldn’t remember who started it.

It wasn’t long before phone-based pre-booking cab services like Tab Cab, Mega Cab, Spot Taxis and the traditional flag-down black-and-yellow cabs too faced severe pressure from the app-based models — across the world, often resulting in strikes, agitations and riots, as the livelihood of regular cab drivers are threatened.