The largest taxi aggregator in the country, Ola, stated that it will collaborate with the businesses, institutions, and housing societies to let customers share rides with people belonging to their social groups.
The new service that was launched in Bengaluru, Ola Share allows customers share their ride fare with the other Ola customers who head in the same director. This move is touted to save almost 50 percent of the fare similar to the UberPool service that was launched by Uber earlier.
Ola customers can get more benefits from this ride sharing feature by offering to match customers with those people from their own social circles. This Ola Share service will also be extended to more cities.
Ola Share works perfect when the users start sharing their rides with people in their social groups. As per Anand Subramanian, the senior director of marketing communications, Ola, they will start exploring to work with housing societies, businesses, and institutions who share the same vision. The vision is to create a scalable and efficient means of transportation in every city.
This initiative has the ability to increase the capacity by around 300 percent, he added. In a market that is supply constrained, solutions like Ola Share can have a great impact in terms of lesser vehicular congestion, better inventory utilization, and economical fares in the cities, he added.
Ola based in Bengaluru is present in over 100 cities, and it has a fleet of 3,50,000 vehicles. It will expand its Ola Share service to around 30 cities in the next six months. Ola has a 50 member team that is dedicated to expand the service.
With the scalability, a driver has the ability to earn up to 60 percent more income due to the improved inventory utilization, stated Subramanian. There are many ride sharing start-ups that have come up in the past two years including Ridingo, Tripda, BlaBlaCar, Let’s Drive Along, and Poolcircle. This concept of ride sharing transportation in metropolitan cities is more accessible, sustainable to the environment, and affordable as well.
