Section E

Manisheel Gautam
Arnab Barua
Rajesh Ranjan

Ola Cabs - A model of competitive Organizational Excellence

Ola has been a model of competitive excellence for the past two years, Overcoming external
factors and competition both domestic and international players and has been the market
leader in cabs industry in India by a considerable margin

ORGANIZATION EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

The environment Ola works is an unstable environment with frequent changes in

government policies, customer preferences, evolving the industry and increasing threat from
competitors.
The industry in which Ola operates is in a nascent phase, and there are severe supply
problems for App-based aggregators to scale up. These issues have been tackled by the
organization with supply marketing initiatives, getting more driver entrepreneurs on the road
by helping with financing & licenses and creating a stable job for taxi drivers in the country.
On top of industry issues, Overcoming government regulatory hurdles have been an ongoing
battle for the organization, which till now Ola has come out on top. Severe restrictions have
placed by state governments and transport regulations1 have created problems for the
organization to function efficiently. But a change in strategy and functioning by adapting to
new rules and dialogues with stakeholders has helped overcome this problem.
The Customer behavior is very unpredictable in this industry driven by pricing and economy
and brand. Ola countered this by creating a seamless experience for both their drivers and
customers using an app to solve all problems and also by keeping prices affordable2 by
scaling up numbers keeping revenue increasing for drivers to stay on the platform. Quality
experience and seamless user experience had helped Ola retain customers and be the
market leader even when competitors engaged in price wars. Radio Taxis and other Appbased aggregators are major competitors3 for Ola. Working on quality both for drivers and
customers has helped Ola negate the effect of measures taken by competitors and prevent
the market from becoming a very price sensitive one.

ORGANIZATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

Even though Ola was not the pioneer of App-based cab hailing, It was the one who
introduced the concept to masses in India. First was building technology which would bring
supply and demand on the same platform and then link them. Building a technology which
could handle this scale of request on a variety of categories across 100 cities in India was a
challenge in itself.
The technology changes have been huge from the start of the company in 2010 to present.
From creating a system of bookings through call centers and website to moving to complete
app-based booking. With the scale increasing from 10k bookings in July 2014 to a million
rides4 a day at present. Apart from optimizing on app based bookings by changing booking
radius, creating cross-selling and interchangeable categories to foraying into wallet
technology5, thus creating a complete solution from seamless bookings to seamless payments
for making travel hassle free for a customer who was used to kerb-side hailing and cash
payments. The wallet enabled Ola to generate transactions on other platforms as well as
increasing the retention rate of customers. The organization is achieving its goal of becoming
mobility partner of the country through technology by creating categories catering to
transport needs of the customers encompassing Inter and intra-city travel. On the Supply
side which forms the crux of the business for the organization, there was optimization on
driver App side. The technology was built for daily payments of every driver factoring in
driver issues, penalties, cash and wallet payments. Tech was also built for tracking driver
problems in real time and rectifying issues, Bringing Number masking 6 and SOS button for
safety all this helped in preventing inconvenience to customers

STRATEGY

Ola was started in a small room, taking bookings through calls only and tracking them on
excel and now has moved on to App only bookings. The changing regulatory environment,
the quest for increased efficiency and competitors, have affected the strategy of the
organization.

Core Strategy
The initial strategy was to take bookings from a call center which later moved to a hybrid of
call center and app bookings after the app was launched. The organization moved to an app
the only strategy7 to increase penetration in the market, to decrease costs incurred from the
call center and improve customer and driver experience by increasing usage of technology.
As part of their goal to be the mobility of the country, different categories were launched to
cater to different needs of customers ranging from using bikes8 as taxis to bringing inter-city
travel on the same platform as Intra-city travel. Categories catering to price-conscious

customers to customers looking for luxury were launched to capture the complete taxi
market. Ola launched auto services on its platform to cater to the niche travel segment
Several other experiments were also run which included grocery and food delivery which
were later stopped as these were deviation from the goal of becoming the mobility of the
country

Supply Strategy
On the supply side strategy changed from time to time depending on both external factors
and internal ones. During rapid scaling of operations, the strategy was to add as much
supply as possible without any focus on the quality, which later changed to quality first to
improve customer experience. Ola also launched driver entrepreneur schemes, where they
facilitated the purchase of vehicles to get more drivers on the road and increasing supply.
The other focus was on leaching competition supply to damage their market share.
Apart from Driver entrepreneur scheme Ola partnered with various car manufacturers to
lease vehicles9 to drivers as part of their strategy to increase and also capture supply

Acquisition and Partnership Strategy

Ola as part of its strategy to increase market share had bought its nearest competitor Taxi
For Sure10 and consolidated its lead in the Indian market before International competition
could increase substantially.
Ola has partnered for platform sharing with Didi in china, Grab taxi in Singapore and Lyft in
US for a seamless usage for its users across these countries11

Marketing Strategy
Pricing and discounting strategy changed over time. The initial focus was on new customer
addition which was driven by aggressive marketing and discounts using various marketing
channels. Later this strategy changed to customer retention, where focus was on customer
lifecycle management and getting good quality customers which were done by directed
marketing

Organizational Goals

Olas goal is to build mobility for every Indian with high-quality products catering to every
section of the society12. Their core competencies are their commitment to quality, customer
service, and innovation. Their operating goal is to lead the way to the future of mobility in the
country and continue being the market leader. They have set a performance goal of getting
more people, both driver partners, and customers on the platform and scale up to 3 million
transactions a day from current 1 million transactions a day. On Innovation and change
goals, Ola has the goal to get more driver entrepreneurs in the industry, create more jobs
and churn out innovative products to make mobility easier for every Indian. Ola is constantly
innovating to bring new and affordable ways to travel. They're focused on improving the
transportation landscape while contributing to social and economic growth

Report Words: 1197

References

1. http://www.livemint.com/Politics/hh9iHhNFi7aDMdVipC0dyK/Govt-drafts-rules-toregulate-Uber-other-ridehailing-firms.html
2. http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/ola-undercuts-uber-with-micro-cabs-at-rs-6-perkm-808988
3. http://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai/fleet-taxi-operator-meru-feels-ola-uber-heatslashes-fares/story-YkaWWiUrHqyMGXO9JImdYM.html
4. http://technews.co/2015/10/20/ola-clocks-over-1-million-bookings-a-day-now-hasover-150-million-cumulative-bookings-on-its-platform/
5. http://yourstory.com/2014/09/ola-mobile-wallet/
6. http://www.bgr.in/news/ola-introduces-new-number-masking-feature-to-protectcustomers-phone-numbers/
7. http://techstory.in/ola-myntra-app-only-07282015/
8. http://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/news/ola-and-uber-announce-bike-taxis-pilot-inbengaluru-809332
9. http://www.livemint.com/Companies/BlZXRRArcSrF90ozAnyOtL/Ola-to-investRs5000-crore-in-cab-leasing-business.html

10. http://yourstory.com/2015/03/ola-acquires-taxiforsure/
11. https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/03/lyft-didi-ola-and-grabtaxi-partner-in-global-techservice-alliance-to-rival-uber/
12. https://www.olacabs.com/info/about_us