Ride-hailing major Ola kickstarts operations in Aizawl

Ride-hailing major Ola has announced its launch of operations in Mizoram’s capital Aizawl. According to the company statement, it has been able to onboard over 200 drivers in the capital.

The platform will provide a smart transportation to the people and will further boost the entrepreneurship opportunities for driver partners in the city, reports ET.

Ola has also partnered with car manufacturers and financial institutions to enable micro-entrepreneurship in the city.

Recently, the company had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the transportation department of Assam to pilot river taxi service in the state. Its rival Uber made debut in Guwahati in August 2015 while Ola had begun its service six months prior to the launch of global behemoth.

Founded in 2011, Ola claims to have 12.5 crore registered users in India and more than 10 lakh driver partners in more than 110 cities. The company serves as many as a billion rides in India annually through its platform.

On local turf, Ola has fiercely been competing with Uber. For the past two years, both the companies have been at loggerheads. The Bhavish Aggarwal-led company had recently launched its service in Australia, and it’s about to enter Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Also Read: App-enabled river taxi service soon to ply in Guwahati, courtesy Ola

Ola is also running a fleet of electric vehicles in Nagpur and has invested upwards of Rs 50 crore towards EVs and charging infrastructure in the orange city. Ola is also setting up a dedicated team to design Ola electric auto fleet (e-rickshaws) across the country.

To fight deep-pocketed Uber in India, it raised about $2 billion in October last year from a consortium of investors including Softbank and Tencent. Two months later, it bought Foodpanda India and made its re-entry into food delivery space.