Amidst the preparations for an IPO, Ola, a ride hailing giant unicorn, has forayed into the self- drive car rental segment with the launch of its new platform ‘Ola Drive,’ reported ET.
Explaining the increased demand for self-drive car service in India, Arun Srinivas, Chief, Sales and Marketing, Ola, said, “Looking at mobility at large, we have accelerated our growth across different mobility spaces. We have expertise in serving millions of customers through a large fleet of vehicles across 250-plus cities, and now we are adding Ola Drive to this.”
The Bengaluru-based company said that it will infuse $200 million for Ola Drive’s expansion and the service will be offered for a period of upto two months as part of the initial stage.
Ola, which currently claims to be having over 200 million subscribers, is looking to on-board over 20,000 cars by 2020.
Recently, Ola received the first infusion of INR 35.88 crore from its IPO trust.
Ola, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati-led was founded in December 2010 as an online cab services in Mumbai. It is an online transportation network company developed by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd. The company has been expanding its horizons with focus on credit over the last few years.
Ola offers commuters the option of both black cabs and private hire vehicles. The team claims to offer the highest driver rates in the region.
Making its entry into a different segment and throwing a competitive marker to other startups in the similar domain like Zoomcar, Drivezy and others, the company said that people can avail this facility with a starting security deposit of Rs 2,000.
Customers have the flexibility to pay only for the number of kilometres and hours that the car is used, it added.
Earlier, Aggarwal had stated that Ola India operations are currently profitable.
Including Ola, other leading ride-hailing cab services include Grab, Uber, Gett, Meru Cabs, Careem, and many more.
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