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Ola Cabs announces a big jump into self-drive car rental business in India

Ola Cabs has the plan to start the service initially for the consumers in the metro cities of Bengaluru, followed by Hyderabad, Mumbai and Capital City, Delhi.

Ola Cabs is planning to provide more flexibility to its users by offering them the complete freedom to design their own package or modify a package and control everything from the number of kilometers and hours to fuel inclusion.

The largest cab company of India, Ola cabs had announced its big plan to jump into the self-drive car rental business on Thursday, 17th October 2019. Ola Cabs intends to disrupt the market right now and own a big fleet of about 20,000 cars by next year. This will be more than 50 percent of the fleet size of the whole industry as per the company.

Right now, the self-drive car rental business segment is dominated by companies including Zoomcar, Revv, Drivezy, Avis, Voler and Myles in the Indian Market. Zoomcar has a fleet of more than 10,000 cars and is the biggest in the self-drive car rental business. According to a report, the total revenue that is made from the car rental business in India was more than $250 million in the year 2018 and this has been expected to grow at a good rate of 14.3 percent to over $570 million in the year 2023. The report also analyzed the number of users of rental cars. As per the report, currently, the number of users for car rentals was over 12 million in the year 2018 and that number has been expected to grow to more than 16 million by the year 2023.

Ola Cabs has the plan to start the service initially for the consumers in the metro cities of Bengaluru, followed by Hyderabad, Mumbai and Capital City, Delhi. Ola Cabs has planned to provide as much freedom as possible to the car rental users. They have made sure that the users are able to design their own package and control everything from the number of kilometers and hours to fuel inclusion etc. Doing this will make the services customizable as well as allow savings of over 30 percent over the other car rental providers. The minimum limit is that the customers can rent a car for a minimum of two hours with a security deposit of Rs 2,000 only.

All of the Ola Drive cars will be completely equipped with Ola's connected car platform Ola Play, which will be enabled through a 7-inch touchscreen infotainment system and will also include the GPS, media playback as well as Bluetooth connectivity. The car users will also have complete access to a 24x7 Ola helpline, the emergency button that will enable an immediate call from Ola's Safety Response team, and there will be real-time tracking. The service of the company will also offer roadside assistance as well so that the user can have a hassle-free experience.

The Ola self-drive cars will be made available to the users in the city of Bengaluru, Karnataka at pick-up stations located near various different residential and commercial hubs. Ola says that it has conducted proper research with many individuals with different driving experiences so as to understand the various user requirements and the preferred car models. These models include hatchbacks, premium sedans, compact and premium SUVs, luxury cars and many others.

Mr. Arun Srinivas, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Ola Cabs had said in a statement, "We are very excited to launch the Ola Self-Drive category of cars to the consumers, this is a big step towards building a holistic shared mobility scenario in the country. India's car-sharing market has so much potential to grow, which has not yet seen investment in technology at a large scale as well as operations to make the model viable." 

"Ola Cabs has been deep-rooted in the Indian mobility scenario, engaged in building technology-enabled transportation solutions for millions of Indian users. Our expertise in serving millions of customers through a large fleet of vehicles across more than 250 cities in India has been an asset in making ride-hailing a norm in the country. Ola Drive has been built on the same concept and it will be playing a role in transforming and defining India's car-sharing market in the coming years," Mr. Arun added.

"In the first phase of its launch, Ola Drive will be offered as a short-term self-drive car-sharing service as we are currently looking to provide a long-term subscription, corporate leasing, and many more options in the coming time," he said in a statement.

Ola Cabs' entry into the self-drive car-sharing business may bring a round of consolidation between the current players in the market. Also, there are reports of the possibility of a merger between the self-drive car businesses Zoomcar and Drivezy.

Also read:- RIL expected to Become First Indian Firm To Hit $200 Billion Market Cap as per BofAML

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Justin Hall Comics

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