Online Food delivery startups have been gaining immense traction in India lately, with many already funded with great deal of capital. Now, to cash up on that traction, app-based taxi-hailing app Ola Cabs has started its own food delivery service called Ola Cafe.
The service, which currently looks to be in a sort of test-phase, is available in four major Indian cities, which include Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai. Ola Cafe covers almost all of the major locations in cities it currently operates, and is looking to expand into more locations soon.
However, there isn’t a separate app for Ola Cafe. You can simply upgrade your current Ola Cabs app to the latest version, which includes the new Ola Cafe feature. This is a fine strategy, as it instantly gives Ola Cafe, a massive exposure to which could have been an uphill task, if it was launched as a stand-alone app.
In principle, the feature is similar to multiple other stand-alone apps in the same domain. You get that usual map showing your location. Select a food/food-joint serving nearest to your current location. Select your order, confirm it and its on its way.
However, currently it lets you order food between specific time intervals only. In fact, the type of food which you can order in those limited time frames, is also restricted to a few options. Here’s the when and where of Ola’s food ordering app :
- Lunch : 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM
- Snacks : 3:00 PM to 7.00 PM
- Dinner : 7:00 PM to 11.00 PM
The Food delivery domain has been a surging trend among startups lately. While startups like TinyOwl, have become mainstream with infusion of decent amount of capital, other more domain-specific apps like HolaChef (lets you order food made by chefs across regions) have also gained decent amount of traction.
It would be interesting to see how Ola Cafe changes the food-ordering landscape, considering that it is opening up to over 3 Million Ola Cbas app users, during its initial launch itself.
