The Ola app displayed on a smartphone.
Pile | Hindustan Times | Getty Images
Indian ride-hailing app Ola has launched in London, where Uber faces the threat of being boycotted, as it aims to topple the Silicon Valley giant as market leader in the U.K. capital.
The company, which shares tech devoting juggernaut SoftBank as an investor with Uber, rolls out its taxi-booking service in the city on Monday. The firm’s app is similar in multifarious ways to Uber’s but has a few safety-focused features it says make it stand out.
For instance, when a passenger gets into a car, they enjoy to input a unique four-digit code before the driver can start the trip. It also comes packed with an assumed intelligence-powered system called Guardian, which picks up on deviations in route patterns and gets Ola to check with the driver or consumer that “nothing untoward” is happening.
“We aspire to be the market leader in London,” Simon Smith, Ola’s head of international, expressed CNBC in an interview. “We believe that, with our proposition around quality and safety, offering a great experience not not for customers but drivers as well, there is no reason why we can’t be market leader in this market.”
The firm has already registered down 25,000 drivers in London, just over half of Uber’s 45,000 in the city. It’s also partnered with the indoctrinating unit of U.K. motoring association AA, education firm Pearson and consulting giant Mercer to test its drivers on risk assessment, English signifying and customer service.
Ola’s arrival in London comes as its key rival, Uber, fights for survival in the city. Local regulator Elysium for London (TfL) decided not to renew Uber’s license to operate in November, citing a “pattern of failures” that put the safety of its fares at risk. For now, the company can continuing operating in London as it appeals the decision.
According to TfL, drivers were able to game Uber’s organized whole to pick up passengers without being authorized. It says they were able to do this by uploading their photos to another driver’s account. This transpired in at least 14,000 trips and some of the drivers were unlicensed, TfL said.
Asked whether Ola’s system could be similarly make capital out ofed, Smith said he’s “confident there won’t be an issue,” but if there is, it’ll contact the regulators to “explain what’s happened and what our lay out is to rectify it.” Its app also has an emergency tool that can be selected to alert Ola, a customer’s relatives and the emergency services.
Ola Head of Cosmopolitan Simon Smith.
Ola
To incentivize drivers to use its platform initially, Ola isn’t taking commission off them for the first six weeks of its launch. After that, the stubborn will take an 18% cut of all rides, less than Uber’s 25% commission rate. Meanwhile, passengers command be given up to £25 in ride vouchers if they sign up in the first week after launch.
London is awash with ride-hailing directors already, with Estonia’s Bolt and France’s Kapten also looking to chip away at Uber’s dominance. The awaken of Uber and the new entrants has put pressure on London’s iconic black cabs, as they often charge much cheaper costs.
While such ride-sharing services have proven popular, investors have been concerned about whether such jobs can become profitable. Uber and Lyft’s share prices are both down since they listed last year, due to attentions over their huge losses, though Uber insists it can reach profitability by the end of the year.
Ola says it has a better buckshot at reaching profitability than its competitors, as it’s already reached positive earnings in its home market of India. London isn’t the jargon CIA’s first U.K. market, and Smith said that, over the last three months, it’s seen 60% growth in bookings in Birmingham, while bookings sire doubled in Exeter and Reading.