“Ola” is my taxi for sure
My learnings from an OLA experience
Had the opportunity to drive with Mr.Rajendran of ola. The one hour drive was a learning on how business is changing in India. How simple businesses like catching a cab are getting revolutionised through technology and through competitive customer acquisition and retention activites. New age technology companies are disrupting the old age business and creating great value proposition for both the customers and the community at large.
8000 cab drivers have migrated from fastrack and ntl to OLA in the last 3 months in chennai. olas technology is much better compared to a subjective call center handled by ntl and fastrack. ntl and fastrack used to charge 7k per month as service fee and offer 18 rs per km for driver they used to get an average of 5 rides per day.
With ola — ola doesnt have any monthly charge on the driver. Ola collects Rs 12 per km from customer and gives the taxi driver 16 rs per km (Dont ask anything, thats the VC subsidy). If the guy does more than 5 rides in a day he gets 1000 incentive and if he does more than 10 rides in a day he gets 2500 incentive. And during festive days incentive is doubled for taking rides.
The enrollment center of OLA in chennai is in ashok nagar. Ola gives a mobile devise and branding free during enrolment and there is no charge for the mobile.They also give a 3 hour training on how to use devise, how to handle customers and how to talk the ola way
The driver whom i met had taken up ola 6 months back. prior to that he was with ntl where he had accumulated losses and not paid his monthly dues. Now with ola in last 6 months he has cleared all his installment dues and is making avg 4k per day on rides. he has caught up on all his installment payments and earned well during xmas and new year season when ola offered almost 5k incentive per day for performing drivers.
The entire cab community feel they have got a new lease of life with ola coming into the industry.
Ola has regular interaction with drivers through their mobile devise. Ibelieve they are coming up with new business models to interlink cities so that we just need to pay one way.
When asked the driver that how long will ola subsidise rs. / kg — he feels that the business model will work even if after all the cab acquisition ola increases customer rates and reduces cab driver payments.
When asked why he answers that ola is got a great incentive structure for performing drivers and they get paid/credited by ola at the of the day. This gives them great liquidity.
The cab drivers are suprisingly very aware of the players in the market like uber and taxi for sure. he also knows that tfs has been bought by ola and that uber had this issue in delhi.
Hail technology, Hail customer !
