There was a time when calling a cab was nothing less than a
war. The first thing was catching a cab. The incessant refusals of the cabs for
going to your destination were a frustrating thing. Even after you managed to
grab a taxi, you had to battle it out with him to go on the meter. If lucky,
the cab would agree, but the meter would run so fast that even traveling a
short distance felt like you have traveled a thousand kilometer and he is
charging you for that. This often resulted in an ugly spat between you and your
cab drivers. This was a very common scenario in India, and the autocracy of the
cab drivers harassed the commuters for a long time.
However, this scenario changed with the entry of app cab
services like OLA and Uber. These two app-based cab services made the
commuter’s life a bit easy in India as they no longer had to struggle with the
cab drivers for going to their respective destinations. The apps have
designated cars which roam around in the city. Booking cabs via these apps are
easy too. You have to feed your pick up address and drop area in the app and
select a ride for yourself. You can either go in a shared cab or pool or take a
taxi of our own. The cab will come to your location as per the map on the GPS and
then pick you up and drop you at your designated place.
There is no tug of war for the fare as well since the charges
are fixed as per the distance you will travel, and as per the category of
vehicles, you will choose. It is economical to travel in share or basic sedan
class whereas the premium and the intercity categories, charges are bit
more.
Both UBER and OLA are at loggerheads to grab the maximum
market share in the app based cab service. While Ola is an Indian startup
company which is trying to get hold of the app based service market in India,
its rival UBER is an international brand that has its services all over the
world right from Europe, America, countries of southeast Asia and the middle
east.
This is where UBER gets the upper hand and has a larger fleet
of cabs in comparison to OLA. However, both cab companies share some equal
problems when it comes to serving the passengers of India. The Indian commuter
is very price conscious, and its frequent dynamic pricing of surged fare often
makes the people reluctant to book the cab due to the high price.
Secondly, the service of the taxi is what matters the most.
Both companies try to induct new and improved vehicles in the fleet to provide
maximum comfort to the passengers. The company has also set guidelines for the
cab owners about the condition and age of the cars. This is done so that the
passengers do not complain about car breakdown or quality of the ride. The
image of the company mainly relies on factors like these.
UBER operates in more than 30 cities in India whereas OLA has
110 cites in its kitty. It means the market share of OLA 45 percent in
comparison to UBER which has 35 percent of market share in India. OLA also
caters its customer with the benefit of OLA money and prime play.OLA money is a
digital wallet through which you can easily make the payments, and the premium
service provides in-car entertainment to passengers. However, UBER’s
profitability is more than OLA as it has also included local cabs and auto
rickshaws in its fleet giving it another upper hand over OLA. The war between
OLA and UBER will only intensify in the future, and we have to see who emerges
as the winner.
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