Journal 2018 (Publication 2)
International Peer-Reviewed Journal
RESEARCH HORIZONS, S.R. NO. 2, VOL. 8 NOVEMBER 2018
TO STUDY AND ANALYZE THE GROWTH STORY OF
AGGREGATORS LIKE OLA
Sharon Jude Samuel*
ABSTRACT
st
This study tells that Ola was the 1 Taxi Aggregator in India and it is an online cab aggregator that
is based in Bangalore and it is the fastest growing Taxi hiring firms. It is owned by Bhavesh
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Agrarwal and Ankit Bhati the founders of OLA founded OLA on 3 December 2010. By 2014, OLA
has expanded to a network of more than 18000 cars. Since then now OLA is operating in and
over 100 cities across the country. In April,however, there was an increase in cabs to 40000
across India. To avail the services of OLA cabs all that you need is to have user name and
password which will help you book a taxi with ease. OLA’s market share is large enough because
th
India’s rate of vehicle ownership is low to that of 41 per 1000 people and ranks 128 worldwide.Ola
so believes that technology will help them make the Taxi Industry efficient and drastically improve
the customer experience in years to come. OLA cabs have lined up aggressively their expansion
plans after they got funding’s from Softbank. After this tie-up OLA expects to have around a
million driver partners in 3 years. As of now OLA has 35000 cabs on its
Keywords : Ola Cabs, marketing strategy.
Introduction
India seems to be going through a ‘Taxi’ revolution. Every other day, there is a new start up
offering efficient cab service to the citizens operating urban and rural lifestyles. The intra-city
travel has always been a curse for many individuals, especially in crowded cities like Mumbai
and Bangalore.
While the local trains emerge as an alternative to shelling out wads of cash for fuel and waiting in
bumper-to-bumper traffic in cosmopolitan Mumbai, the dangers of travelling by these trains are
innumerable. The distances in Bangalore crush the spirit out of anyone who loves to drive, and
the traffic makes it terrible to drive your own vehicle in the city. Ola Cabs is a taxi service that
was started in 2010 in Mumbai to solve the city’s transport woes.
Started by Bhavesh Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, the company now provides taxi services in over
1
00 cities across the country. One can avail an Ola cab extremely easily and their trusted drivers
will get you to your destination hassle free. The company now houses its office in Bangalore.
Taxi can be booked either through their website or through a mobile app that is available for
download on Google Play Store and The App Store.
The entrepreneurial bug bit Aggarwal in 2010, when he was working as a coder for Microsoft India in
New Delhi. In August that year, braced with savings of about Rs 1 lakh, he started olatrip.com, a trip
planning firm offering weekend getaway tours around Delhi. Over the next five months, Aggarwal
could not sell a single trip. Customers could arrange hotels for themselves but what they really
needed was a vehicle to take them to the destination, he realized. This demand was a hint of the
potential for cabs.
Leading taxi aggregator Ola plans to remain focused on growth and expansion while not being
overly concerned about profitability. Ola, which has raised around $1.3 billion till now, with presence
in over 100 cities, will look to expand its portfolio of services and introducing new products. Ola is the
large player in the taxi aggregator segment accounting for over one million bookings a day.
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RESEARCH HORIZONS, S.R. NO. 2, VOL. 8 NOVEMBER 2018
There is a massive opportunity in front of them as over 300 million people in India use some sort of
public transportation. Even if you take 40% of this market share that is huge. That is the area we are
looking at. However, he did not divulge details on the plans of Ola in terms of expansion or the new
products they are planning to offer.
Ola has also recently introduced bus shuttle service which is targeted at the corporate segment. The
aggregator already has over 2,500 small companies who use their services on a contract basis. Now,
the plans are to extend this to the bigger corporate especially major IT companies whose requirements
will be on a larger scale.
Founded in 2010 by IIT-Bombay alumni Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Ola has operations across
1
02 cities in India. It has about 2.5 lakh vehicles on its platform.
Significance of the study
Before studying the Objectives, we have seen the significance of the study. Ola signifies the following
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This study helped the competitors to make their investment patterns and change in their strategies.
This study also helped new startups to start business with zero investment. The highlights of the
study will help the other aggregators to know their market share and future scope.
-The study helped the customers to avail the various benefits of Ola.
Statement of the problem
Some of the problems that Ola faces have been observed
Customers have faced a big problem by its rude behavior of its drivers and also the drivers silently
stole the customers money i.e. they start ticking the meter even if they do not reach their pick-up
point. Recently one of the customers of Ola has also gone through a gang rape by of its 2 of its drunk
drivers of just a 12-year girl in Kolkata. And also, one of its drivers threatened to rape a female
passenger in Pune. The other problems faced by customers is that the drivers are not punctual on
time and do not come to their pick-up places on time. The other problem is that the drivers are using
Google map which shows long way routes.
Objectives of the study
The Objectives of the study are based on significance of the study. Objective of the study are as
follows
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·
·
·
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To study the growth story of Ola.
To Analyze Why Customer’s, Prefer Ola
To find out the view point of Driver’s about the services of Ola.
To Analyze the Marketing Strategy of Ola
To understand how Ola has transformed the life of its drivers.
Scope of the study
The Study was to aim at understanding and analyzing the customer perception towards Ola cabs.
The scope of the study was limited solely to the markets visited by the researcher for the purpose of
research i.e. Mumbai Metropolitan. This may hence not be a total reflection of the whole population of
OLA customers in other part of Mumbai.
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RESEARCH HORIZONS, S.R. NO. 2, VOL. 8 NOVEMBER 2018
Review of Literature
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Sujit, J. (2016) instructs that the co-founder of OLA Amit Bhati who is a chief technology officer of the
cab aggregator and has done BTech in mechanical engineering and MTech in CAD also automation
from IIT Bombay. During his talks with the Times of India he spoke about the solutions to bring
Innovations for OLA. The author tells that as OLA is moving to small towns with low infrastructure they
need to localize and have seamless connectivity with drivers and customers. There is a driver app
available in all the languages. Along with this there is a phenomenal response to their Wi-Fi services.
Then the author asks the cofounder on what has OLA done for seamless connectivity in poorly
connected areas. To this Bhati responded that OLA has launched a very unique SMS app
communication service along with Google plays location service that helps to be in touch with the
drivers.
2
Samidha, S.(2014) this articles indicates that OLA Cabs has raised Rs.250cr of fresh funds valuing
the Taxi service start-up over Rs.1000cr. India’s focused-hedge fund Stead view Capital and Silicon
Valley ‘s blue-chip VC firm Sequoia Capital led the latest round of fund raise which also included
participation of existing investors Matrix Partner India and Tiger Global. OLA’s value has more than
doubled since it has got on board with Matrix Partner in a Rs.120cr fund raise since November. It also
joins other consumer internet start-ups like Quikr, Zomato, Bookmyshow which have valuation of
Rs.1000cr. OLA’s Aggarwal told that the money raised would be used by OLA to expand it to new
cities. OLA has 11000 cabs in 9 cities and it having 12000 booking per day 50% are through mobile
app.
3
Ketan, T. (2016) explains that Mahindra&Mahindra have devised a strategy to build volumes and
the also announce a partnership with OLA by supplying 40,000 cars in 2 years and generate business
of over Rs.2600cr for the Mahindra Group. But according to Bhavesh Agarwal the company plans to
have at least 5 million cars under its umbrella over the next 5 years. The chairman of the Mahindra
Group added that his company is well placed and has the products that is required by both fleet
market and personal buyers. In terms of share the fleet market has grown tremendously from 2-3% to
almost 10-12% at a amount of 20,000 to 25,000 units the significant growth was led by both OLA and
Uber.
4
Karthikeyn, H. (2016) explained that around 300 Ola drivers stayed off road and had a protest
outside an office Ekkaduthangal for having better schemes and incentives. But it did not affect the
services of OLA. In this article it is told that the drivers are forced to take 9 trips in a day without fail
and if they do not, they get paid only 4.80per km and 80paise per minute as the ride time charges.
Ola also deducts 20% from the total amount if the driver misses one trip and it had been noted that
OLA drivers derive the incentives that they earn in the last trip of the day. The author also focuses on
how the drivers at OLA have to face a penalty of Rs.400 if they get a complaint from the customer that
the driver did not reach on time and as per sources the delay is mainly caused due to inaccuracy of
the GPS system or due to no proper address given by the customers still, they have to face the
penalty.
5
PTI(2016) explained that both Tata AIG and Paytm have entered into an agreement to provide both
cab drivers and auto drivers the best health insurance plans. This tie up basically helps the drivers
with Paytm digital wallet to get benefits of cashless health service through the TATA AigGeneral
Insurance it provides them the care and treatment as per their need and budget. In this policy
however also, it covers the existing health condition of the drivers and also hospitalization expense of
Rs.50,000. This initiative taken has got a very good response with 1’800 drivers already signed in.
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RESEARCH HORIZONS, S.R. NO. 2, VOL. 8 NOVEMBER 2018
Methodology
Research methodology is a way to solve the research problem systematically with sufficient literature
review, it can be stated that boosting the taxi aggregators and making it standardize for drivers and
customers from different section of the society is the need of the hour, hence, title selected for the
research study is ‘To Study and Analyze the Growth Story of Aggregators like OLA’ The various
dimensions of the research methodology are:
The various dimensions of the research methodology are
Research Design
The researcher has used exploratory and descriptive research design for the study:
Exploratory research is used in research study where in an insight is required in a given situation,
it helps us to answer the question “what is going on here?”. Hence in the present study ,the researcher
has made an attemp to study various facilities provided by Ola to its drivers and customers
Descriptive research is used by the researcher as the research study is concerned with decribing
various facilities used by the ola cab drivers.
Data collection
a) Primary Data
The primary data was collected on the basis of a questionnaires and personal interview. The structured
close and open-ended questionnaires was be distributed to the respondents. The research her
approached.
·
·
Drivers and
OLA Customers
on random selection at the selected sample area. For the clear understanding of the questionnaire,
each question was explained personally to the drivers and customers so that the respondents’ doubts
were cleared.
Questionnaires were prepared one for customers and another for the drivers.25 Drivers and 75
Customers will be interviewed.
Secondary Data
Required Secondary data like about Ola cabs was collected from various references which are
already existing and have been published in various books, articles in newspaper like The Economics
Times, Journals Like Indian Journal of Applied Research, NDTV News Gadget,lastly form the world’s
biggest library i.e. Internet.
Researcher also visited library of Maniben Nanavati Women’s College at Vile Parle (West) of SNDT
University.
Sample design
The sampling designs was designed by taking into account customers and drivers of Mumbai
Metropolitan. Primary data will be collected from Mumbai metropolitan. Following table shows sample
size.
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RESEARCH HORIZONS, S.R. NO. 2, VOL. 8 NOVEMBER 2018
Sr. No.
1
Respondent
OLA Drivers
OLA Customers
Total
Number
25
2
.
75
100
Sampling unit
Sampling Unit was a single unit of the population. A single individual who avails the services of OLA
form the sampling unit of the study.
Sampling technique
The selection of the respondents was done on the basis of convenience technique based on the
non-probability method of sampling
Data analysis and interpretation
The study was based on secondary and primary data which wascollected from various internet sites
and through books and journals. The Primary data was analyzed through frequency distribution
method and then converted in percentage. Collected Data was edited to avoid unwanted information
and arrange the data in the proper order and sequence property edited data was coded and classified
to further make it simple by preparing tables, graph, charts and diagram etc. wherever necessary.
An attempt was made to draw proper conclusions on the basis of the data analysis and achieve all
the objectives of research study.
Extent
Extent refers to geographical area where there is a scope of population. The extent of study is within
Mumbai Mertopolitan.
Limitations of the study
The study had the following limitations.
1
2
3
. The research was conducted only in Mumbai Metropolitan due to time convenience.
. This research was having limited information about OLA cabs.
. The study was limited to only one travel aggregator in Mumbai.
Objective wise findings
The researcher has drawn certain conclusion/finding according to the objective of the study and it is
represented as follows
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RESEARCH HORIZONS, S.R. NO. 2, VOL. 8 NOVEMBER 2018
Conclusion/Finding
Sr.
Objectives
No.
1.
To study the growth storyof OLA
It aims a clear conclusion right from the founder hav in g started
his business ‘gateway’ tours with only one lakh rupees where
he cou ld just plan only weekend tours in Delhi. Then, he
realized he needs to think bigger and now OLA has become the
first taxi aggregator in India. Having the acquisition of “Taxi for
sure” made its mark in Ind ia with also having huge customer
base. They have also expanded through “Ola shuttles” in the IT
sector that covers 2500 small companies. Ola has grown till
date in almost 102 cities all across India and has 2.5 lakh
vehicles on its platform and has 3,50,000 partners with a market
share of 80% which is the highest for any taxi aggregator. Ola
has also come up with their cab sharing and also cab hiring for
vacation purpose.
2.
To Analyze Why Customer’s, Prefer It aims at why the customer’s prefer Ola cabs on this many of
Ola.
the respondents having income of 1000-20000told that they
prefer Ola 1-4 times, for their office use, because of its
availability and for its comfort and safety, they have heard
about them thru their family and friends, majority of them rate
their experience as good during their trip, cleanliness as high,
speed of the driver as medium, behavior good and he followed
his navigator. The count of cabs with Ola according to them is
medium and it’s nearby for them while making a booking. They
receive prompt service from the customer care and they will
also recommend Ola to their near and dear ones.
2
.
.
To find out the view point of Driver’s It shows the view point of the drivers about the services of Ola.
about the services of Ola
They tell that they are associated with Ola for one year, and they
have joined Ola because it has more money, their registration
process is very fast, they are happy with the profit-shar in g ratio
of 20% also, Ola gives them and their families a lot of benefits
too. They work on their own time and still earn enough money.
In short, the drivers views related to Ola is that it is a very good
place to work for them.
3
To analyze the marketing strategy It shows Ola uses a very good appropriate marketing strategy to
of OLA.
attract its customers, and the most preferred offline marketing
strategy is that “O la treats its customers with care”, the care and
concern that the customers receive makes them more
comfortable to avail Ola’s services. The most preferred online
strategy is Ola uses “face book” for getting connected with its
customers. These marketing strategies used by Ola helps it in
becoming more popular and also gain more of importance in
the competitive world.
4.
To understand how OLA has Itshows how Ola has transformed the life of its drivers through
transformed the life of its drivers.
the case study of four of its drivers who tell that how their life
has been transformed right from struggling to earn Rs. 10000-
2
0000 per month to earning Rs.50000 per month approx. Before
joining Ola, the drivers had to work continuously for 9 to 10
hours and work six days a week and after joining Ola they work
on their own convenient time i.e., (they have their own time
preference), they even put their app off for a day or two when
they do not want to take a trip. They even take extra trips when
they are in need of more money.
Conclusion
From the overall study the researcher has concluded that Ola from being a small startup that started
its operation in Bangalore now has its operations spread over more than 102 cities all across the
country. Ola was a very small concern when it was started by two of its founders as they had no
enough money to grow their business. Later, they started getting funds from all banks especially the
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main funding that helped them was the funding from Japan’s Softbank. Now, Ola has very big names
attached with them. Ola has got into many tie – ups that has also led it to gain much more importance.
Ola has it’s tie up with Mahindra & Mahindra that has helped to increase the number of cars by
4
0,000 on road which is very valuable for them as well as the people that need jobs they can join as
drivers and earn a good sum of money.
Ola not only has little educated people as their drivers but they also have many educated and people
from very good posts that have joined Ola because of the stress that they receive from their work
place and also because Ola offer’s them the freedom to take rides when they want and to not take
rides when they don’t want by just putting their APP On and Off.
Ola has become so famous in spite of the stiff competition that they get from their competitors by
offering the different discounts and offers to their customers. Ola also offers benefits to its drivers like
they have quick registration process that takes hardly 30 minutes. They are able to get loans for their
cars from the finance companies. They get medical benefits for themselves and their families both
along with this they get special education benefits for their kids. Ola offers a massive discount of 50
per cent to their customers sometimes during their trip. Ola has started with Ola hill station that is
where the customers can rent a car for their holidays.
Ola is also mostly preferred because it offers complete transparency in tariff and also full comfort and
safety to its customers. Ola is growing too fast and it has chances of more success.
Reference
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Prof. Brijesh, S. & Dr. R.K., Gopal. (2016).Demystifying the Brand Patanjali - A Case on growth
strategies of Patanjali Ayurved Ltd.Retrieved from http://library.pes.edu/opac/Casestudy.pdf .
Deepak (2015). Baba Ramdev, Patanjali and the art of content marketing.Retrieved from http://
withstartups.com/babaramdev-patanjali-art-content-marketing.
Vangipuram, D. (2016). No business plan. No marketing. Meet India’s new FMCG giant. Retrieved
from http://deskstory.com/nobusiness-plan-no-marketing-meet-indias-newfmcg-giant-patanjali.
*
Asst. Professor, MNWC, Mob.: 9769553762
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