Numbers tell the story of Ola vs Uber rivalry in India

The ride-hailing business in India is at an inflection point, witnessing a mere single-digit growth in the last couple of years. And the two largest companies in the ride-hailing space, Ola and Uber, are continuously hunting for new opportunities for growth.

While both the ride-hailing firms keep exploring new opportunities such as self-drive car rental, corporate tie-ups and public transport collaborations to drive up ride numbers, they have often been found contesting against each other in their claims of owning a majority market share in the country.

US-based ride-hailing platform Uber in a recent report claims to have command over 50% of the market share in India. For Uber, India is its sixth-largest market in terms of rides globally according to its internal estimations.

According to the company, it did about 14 million rides a week in 2019, which is a rise of 3 million rides or about 25% over the previous year.

Uber currently operates in 58 cities in India.

Whereas homegrown ride-hailing player Ola claims to have done about 28 million weekly bookings for the year ended March 2019. While the company did not share the market share figure it commands in India, the ride-hailing firm recorded 1.5 billion rides on its platform in 2018-19.

Its growth has been majorly driven by its new mobility offerings

"Ola serves over 200 million customers through a network of 2.5 million driver-partners across a wide range of offerings including two, three and four-wheelers. Ola's competitive edge lies in building innovative mobility solutions grounds-up, that is demonstrated by over 12 mobility categories solving for a variety of use cases," said an Ola spokesperson.

Ola is currently in over 250 cities in the country.

In recent years, the Bhavish Aggarwal and Dara Khosrowshahi led platforms have been looking at bikes, scooters, and Electric Vehicles to take their auto businesses further.

India is an important market for both players. A lead control in the market can go a long way in boosting their business and expansion plan.