The Silicon Review ^Asia

Taxi has proved itself to be a threat to auto-rickshaw drivers again. Ola, the leading taxi service provider came up with a business threatening idea against auto-rickshaw drivers and yet an innovative idea of social ride sharing. Ola launched a new ‘Share’ feature on its app that will allow its users in the city to share rides, making their travel cheaper.

Ola has introduced the concept of social groups on its app. With groups, colleagues from a workplace and friends from a college can come together to share ride amongst themselves. A user can join multiple groups or simply choose to share a ride with anyone. As soon as a user requests a ‘Share’ ride on the Ola app, they will be matched with other users from their groups along their way.

“Most vehicles see only 33% utilization of capacities. With ‘Share’, we not only bring economy, convenience and comfort of travelling with people in your circles, but also increased inventory utilization of vehicles on the platform. This will also contribute towards significant reduction of traffic, congestion and pollution in our cities,” Ola Share Head Ishan Gupta said. “Ola Share is a major step in the direction of sustainable transportation, allowing Ola to serve more people at a fraction of the cost, with driver-partners benefiting from increased revenue,” he added.