Group E Atul, Ayon, Deepti, Kuheli, Raj, Soubhagya

2-Aug-2016

OLA CABS
Ola Cabs is on a growth trajectory, but it has much more to achieve:
building a reputed brand, achieving profitability, being a reliable cab
service provider, and operating efficiently in a regulated environment.
Another major differentiator for Ola over competitors could be by
improving safety standards, and hence, building confidence in eyes of
customers.
Some recommendations to build a stronger and competitive aggregator
platform are outlined below:

Enhance brand loyalty For customers, introduce the concept of

Ola Miles a reward based on miles travelled by the customer with
Ola. The reward could be in the form of redeemable miles on the
next trip or discount on the trip fare.

Profitability Ola should try to achieve economies of scale by

increasing its fleet size in existing location as well as expanding into
new cities within India. It can utilize its existing, experienced
operations team to achieve this expansion. Using real-time GPS
enabled tracking technology and effective communication between
drivers and users, Ola can reduce customer waiting time and hence
increased per-day trips for its drivers. These strategies will
immensely contribute to the bottom-line.

Promote Ola Money Balance Cash in passengers wallet can be

invested by Ola. So, promoting usage of Ola Money by providing a
small discount to customers for trip payments from wallet will be a
good strategy to encourage customers to maintain balance on
wallet.

Regulations Acquire a firm that is registered as a radio-taxi

operator so that it is in line with regulations that might be
implemented in light of the Uber incident mentioned in the passage.
This would also help Ola grow inorganically very fast.

Addressing safety issues There are multiple ways in which this

can be achieved:
o Look at demographics of drivers during hiring or contracting,
give preference to drivers with families to reduce risks with
safety. Apart from police verification, hire a third party to perform
background checks.

Group E Atul, Ayon, Deepti, Kuheli, Raj, Soubhagya

2-Aug-2016

o Mandatory in-built GPS like Uber in Ola and allow option to have
trip details sent from Olas server automatically to an Emergency
contact.
o Introduce a Chat facility option This will be useful in a scenario
when a passenger is suspicious but not sure of the drivers
activities (when it might not be necessary to hit the Panic Button)
whether the driver is taking a longer route or does not seem to
when trying to get help from customer support while sitting in
the car.
o Have an Ola Executive call female passengers travelling between
midnight and 5 AM to check whereabouts.
o Install specific dashboard for tracking midnight trips. This
dashboard system will have inbuilt predefined routes as online
tracking mechanism and there will be alert signal if the driver
deviates from the predefined routes.

Additional app based improvement(s)

Offer in-app suggestions about attractions around destinations
Tie-up with merchants to offer location based discounts and
facilitate payment via Ola Money. Discounts and Cashbacks too
can be offered as promotions.
Promoting higher usage of apps by promotional offers will not
only improve top-line but it will also reduce operational overhead
costs that Ola currently incurs for employees who monitor,
coordinate and track bookings done via call or online.