Ola Auto now in 24 cities across India; targets 2 million bookings a day by 2017

Ola announced the launch of auto-rickshaws in 12 new cities across India, taking its Auto Rickshaw booking service to a total of 24 cities across the country. The new cities that were launched include Bhopal, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Kota, Surat, Madurai, Guwahati, Coimbatore, Nagpur, Jodhpur, Visakhapatnam and Udaipur. Ola is targeting to serve at least 2 million daily rides by end of 2017. Ola has also launched a new billing system that will record the details of the trip including time of booking, distance traveled and fare payable, either in cash or through Ola Money. Users can also request a bill on completion of their ride from the Ola app as well. The Ola app for auto-drivers is available in 8 languages including English, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu making it extremely convenient and user friendly for local drivers to use. Ola claims that it has over 100,000 auto rickshaws registered on its platform across 24 cities and plans to launch in more cities in the coming months. Nitesh Prakash, Senior Director, Operations at Ola said, “We are delighted to bring Ola Auto to all of urban India across these 24 cities. Autos as an ubiquitous mode of transportation in Indian cities, already serve hundreds of millions of users everyday. By bringing them on the Ola app, we are transforming the mobility experience for users and improving the revenue opportunity for auto driver-partners with a positive shift in on-demand consumption. With auto-rickshaws available in all of these 24 cities, we are also widening the choice of urban mobility for citizens over and above our current offerings like Micro and Mini in these markets, taking us closer to our mission of building mobility for a billion Indians.”.