With a new campaign that talks about togetherness, Uber challenges Ola's homegrown narrative.
The duo spent almost $400 million in 2018 on rapid expansion as well as discounting to gain new customers, and Uber Eats has managed to edge out Foodpanda by 2 million orders.
Swiggy is rapidly scaling up its technology (tech) teams as the food delivery giant is witnessing strong recovery and growth over the past few months. The SoftBank-backed company is hiring across engineering, product, design, analytics, and data science functions in the next two quarters. Building this team, Swiggy is setting up a new development centre in Gurugram. Its rival Zomato, which had a stellar debut on the Indian stock exchanges in July, is also headquartered in Gurugram.
According to experts, this will have major impact on new investments by Chinese players in companies, such as Paytm, Ola, BigBasket, Byju's, Dream11, MakeMyTrip, and Swiggy, when they go for follow-up funding. Chinese investors, such as Alibaba, Tencent, and Xiaomi, are active in the Indian start-up space, and have collectively invested billions of dollars.
Gig workers are usually spoken of in the context of the sharing economy, like Uber, Ola drivers, delivery persons for Zomato and Swiggy and so on. This is the first time such workers will be covered under India's social security law.
Koo, which works on similar lines as Twitter, was born with a focus on regional language, unlike Twitter and Facebook, which are very popular but primarily cater to an English-speaking audience, reports Neha Alawadhi.
Uber would look to expand the service to six Indian cities
Two IIT-B grads cracked the cab aggregator code, tasted success & failure.
Uber is locked in an intense battle with market leader Ola, which counts Didi as an investor.
Following an assurance from the state government that their grievances would be looked into, the strike -- which was to begin on Tuesday -- has been pushed back.
The Ola Money and Uber tie-ups demonstrate how insurance companies, including even government-run ones, are forging partnerships with every possible service company to offer products.
Vogo, which has a fleet of over 12,000 vehicles mainly across Hyderabad, Mysuru and Bengaluru, is also betting big on India's growing traffic congestion.
In the excitement over the allocation of bank licences for the private sector, a new category of licence offered by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last year went almost unnoticed. That was when the RBI consolidated the rules for prepaid payment instruments (PPI), popularly understood as e-wallets or gift cards. In the process, the regulator has fast-forwarded a bottom-up card usage industry in India that is completely different from the world of bank-linked credit and debit cards.
HR Guru Mayank Rautela offers practical advice.
Ex-AAP strategist Shefali Misra to join Uber as head of public policy
Mahindra launches e-mobility platform 'Glyd' to take on Ola, Uber. Targeted at office-going executives, it offers web-conferencing, curated entertainment and music content from selective partners.
Rediff readers share their experience about taxis and autorickshaws in India.
'All these incidents go to show that the day of the anodyne, apolitical corporation is running out fast,' says Kanika Datta.
Hyundai, which is also toeing Maruti's lines, said special schemes are offered to engage the cab aggregators, including annual-maintenance-contract packages and extended warranty.
Reliance Retail has bought a 25.8 per cent stake in Dunzo, India's leading quick commerce player, for $200 million (around Rs 1,488 crore) as it looks to expand its presence in online grocery delivery business. Dunzo has raised $240 million (about Rs 1,787 crore) in its latest funding round that was led by Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL) - the retail arm of Reliance Industries, the two firms said in a statement. Existing investors Lightbox, Lightrock, 3L Capital and Alteria Capital also participated in the funding round.
Leaders need to be ready to adapt to technological changes as quickly as possible, while they build the tech capabilities, Nadella said.
The cloud kitchen market in India will hit $1.05 billion by 2023. Just 13% of the total market has been utilised so far.
The ban on taxi aggregators can put at risk investments of at least Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion), made by private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) investors.
The Indian arm is the second largest unit for the company, crosses 500 mn trips milestone
Sumit Nagal was beaten by world number 46 Albert Ramos-Vinolas 6-4, 2-6, 5-7.
India has a history of jugaad, and retrofitting vehicles is one such manifestation of the legendary Indian skill. Not so long ago autorickshaws and small Marutis used to strap on subsidised LPG cylinders and power themselves to a cheap ride. There were the odd explosions, lives were lost, but the jugaad continued. Then compressed natural gas (CNG) was introduced in Delhi following a court order. Initially, customised CNG kits were fitted to conventional (internal combustion engine or ICE) autos cheaply, enabling commuting at less than half of what you would cough up for diesel. The industry is better organised now with Suzuki and Hyundai designing CNG-fired vehicles, and Mahindra and TVS manufacturing liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)-powered three wheelers.
Uber and Ola both welcomed the move as a step in the right direction.
100,000 cabs and 45,000 autorickshaws would be plying on the Delhi-NCR routes to handle the rush.
Even as the semiconductor shortage has limited the demand for new cars, the pre-owned car segment is seeing a surge. A preference for personal mobility, availability of multiple organised online platforms, including e-commerce channels, aggregators, and classifieds, have been fuelling growth. The growth rate of the pre-owned car market is expected to be 1.5x that of the new car market over the next five years.
Napoli kept alive their hopes of advancing from Group C after Lorenzo Insigne, Victor Osimhen and Matteo Politano secured a 3-0 home win over Legia Warsaw.
Palo Alto-based electric carmaker Tesla has initiated talks with the government on the modalities of setting up fully-owned retail outlets. The company needs to comply with the foreign direct investment (FDI) guidelines related to single-brand retail, including local sourcing norms, to sell directly in India. At least two other foreign majors - Apple and Ikea - were engaged in talks with the government long before the sourcing norms were eased under the single-brand retail route.
Every home across India makes khichdi and it still isn't as celebrated as it should be.
'The digital trust level has drastically gone up due to Covid, not only in tier-I and II cities, but also in tier-III, IV and V geographies,'
The 'buy-now, pay-later' (BNPL) juggernaut continued to roll on during the festive season with multiple players seeing disbursals grow by more than 100 per cent compared to Diwali last year. LazyPay, the BNPL platform of Prosus-owned payments major PayU, witnessed a credit demand increase of 300 per cent over the festive season last year, especially in segments like travel, food & beverages and entertainment. "We also saw an uptick of 70 per cent in user acquisition in the last two months.
Investments are at risk if operators are unable to resolve concerns of authorities and customers after the rape accusation.
The recent protests by employees of Urban Company and the case of a a Zomato delivery executive who died in a road accident point to the severely straitened condition of gig workers during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Budget 2021 had promised several measures to help the cause of gig economy workers, but most of them are yet to see the light of day. Even after a year, the country's gig workers continue to be without any social security cover or a minimum wage guarantee. "In Budget 2021, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the government is looking toward including migrant and gig workers for social security benefits," says Srinivas Kotni, managing partner, Lexport, a consulting firm. Parliament had passed the Code on Wages in 2019 and Code on Industrial Relations, Social Security and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions in 2020.
As Indians start travelling in the new normal, strong recovery in smaller towns underscores success for ride-hailing giant's 'India to Bharat' strategy, which offers new products in regional markets.
The Code on Social Security, 2020 gives a lot of comfort to gig firms which recognise cab drivers or food delivery executives as 'independent contractors' who directly do business with customers with the help of their digitised platforms.
'What India needs isn't propaganda, manipulated news cycles & foolish theories about millennials, but a concrete plan to #FixTheEconomy that we can all get behind,' Gandhi said in a tweet.
The problem is major, and the problem affects hundreds of millions of people. Ignoring it must have a sound reason. Ignoring it must in some way be more important than addressing it, notes Aakar Patel.