Heena Sharma Blog

Services of Ola and Uber will not be available in Delhi till March 31 amid the lockdown announced by the state government to contain the spread of coronavirus infection . The Delhi government on Sunday said the city will be in lockdown from March 23 to 31, under which no public transport, including private buses, taxis and autorickshaws will be allowed. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced a lockdown — sealing its borders, shutting down markets and directing private firms to give compulsory paid leave to all employees, including contractual — until the end of March. Beyond the 80 districts, states, including Maharashtra, which is leading in the number of coronavirus cases, Rajasthan and Punjab are now under effective statewide lockdowns after they imposed Section 144 that bars gatherings of more than four people. "Uber is complying with all Central and State Government directives related to its services for containing the spread of Coronavirus," an Uber spoke...

Ride-hailing major Ola, which is one of the earliest players to launch bike taxi service , is seeing huge demand in smaller cities and towns across several states. Ola Bike is quietly tapping India’s hinterland where users see bike taxis as the most convenient and cheapest mode of commute in the absence of proper taxi service. For example, Ola Bike is operating in towns such as Gaya, Bikaner, Mughalsarai, Tirupati, Ambala, Pathankot, Ajmer, etc. In tier II cities and beyond, bike taxi services are popular because of the lack of public transport infrastructure. Arun Srinivas, chief sales and marketing officer of Ola, says, “Ola Bike has seen large-scale adoption among people living in India’s hinterlands which have not had access to convenient, affordable and reliable on-demand transportation so far, unlike the larger cities.” Ola Bike, which was first launched in 2016, is now accessed by over 150 million users. The firm now claims Ola Bike has expanded to over 200 cities and...

Ride-hailing company Ola said that it has achieved a unique milestone of facilitating the issue of 20 million in-trip micro- insurance policies to its customers every month under its flagship and industry-first programme, in association with a new age insurer. The product was designed to cater to the needs of customers during their cab rides, specifically for city rides and outstation rides on the Ola platform. Launched in April last year, Ola said the in-trip insurance saw acceptance from all age groups with key metros like Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai registering the fastest adoption growth rates. “ This unique micro-insurance program has been custom built for Ola users, covering the risk of untoward incidents when on the road,” said Nitin Gupta, CEO of Ola Financial Services (OFS). He said over 20 million policies have been availed by customers, every month since the trial phase in April 2018. “We continue to work on such unique propositions that will transform t...

Through the AutoPay feature, users can link their credit or debit card for an Ola ride in the PhonePe app once, and the ride-fare would automatically be paid at the end of every ride Technology News : Flipkart-owned digital payments firm PhonePe has tied up with homegrown cab aggregator Ola, where users can book a cab or an auto using a micro-app built on its payments platform. The company has gone live with three such micro-apps, including that of redBus and Metro services, and plans to go live with 5 to 10 more in the ongoing quarter. “Ola’s scale and reach, topped with our AutoPay feature will enable greater convenience and control to our users while making payments seamless,” said Rahul Chari, co-founder and chief   technology   officer, PhonePe. The company, which has built its payments platform primarily on top of the National Payments Corp of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), crossed the 100-million user milestone last month. Through the ...