Your next ride via the Ola app in an auto rickshaw could be cashless.
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.
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.
The government is planning to extend the electronic modes of tax payment to its own payments platform, Unified Payments Interface (UPI), credit cards of banks, or even a mobile wallet like Paytm.
With its foray into self-drive, Ola will go head-to-head with early entrants Zoomcar, Revv and a few other.
Ola Credit will give customers 7 days of credit so they can keep booking Ola cabs without worrying about having sufficient cash
The development comes amid Japan's SoftBank booking an investment loss of 39.28 billion yen (USD 350 million) on its investments in India, including those in Ola and e-commerce company Snapdeal.
There are times when a customer books a cab and is charged for the ride, but the driver doesn't show up. It is one of the many hacks that cab drivers use.
Around 500 people have signed up on Ola's platform for the Bike Taxis service.
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Ola's rival Uber is trying to set up a local engineering centre in Bengaluru.
The deal brings the two start-up stalwarts - Bansal and Ola co-founder and chief executive officer Bhavish Aggarwal - together in the backdrop of growing foreign control in this space.
With regard to his investment in Ola, Bansal said that on the one hand, the ride-hailing major had emerged as a global force in the mobility space and on the other it continued to build deeper for various needs of a billion Indians through its platform. This is the largest funding by an individual in the app cab.
About 1,000 such cabs have been registered on the company's platform so far
Tencent reinforces India's consumer internet story. Ranju Sarkar reports.
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