Ola, India’s largest cab hailing service, and perhaps Uber’s fiercest Asian rival, has announced the launch of a new feature called “Ola Select” which provides select passengers services like free in-cab Wi-fi, upgrades at no extra cost, special discounts and a range of exclusive benefits from Ola’s partner brands like Myntra, Snapdeal and Cleartrip.
However, the program is not open for all, as of now. Its similar to how loyalty cards, Premium customers and other such features work in shopping stores. The company is inviting customers to the program based on the user behavior and frequency, among other parameters. It will be given out to users with high degree of usage.
As for partnerships, this will be Ola’s third big multi-barnd partnership, among numeorus other smaller ones. Earlier this month, it partnered with OnePlus for an on-demand OnePlus Two experience. Prior to that, it announced partnership with The Directorate General Resettlement (DGR) under the Ministry of Defence, in first of its kind partnership to enroll about 1,00,000 ex-servicemen as entrepreneurs under “Ola Sainik“.
Sudarshan Gangrade, Vice President- Marketing at Ola said,
Many of our customers use us every single day of their lives and Ola Select is our way of treating them ultra-special. Ola Select aims to give loyal users, a wide range of benefits like in-cab Wi-fi, upgrades, exclusive offers from our partners and more. We are confident that Ola Select customers would enjoy the additional benefits and continue to be patrons and evangelists in our mission of mobility for a billion people.
Along with these partnerships, the company is also diversifying its business to other sectors — pretty much on the lines of how Uber is diversifying in the west — and is not limited to cab-hailing only. Recently, it launched its hyperlocal delivery app called Ola Store. Prior to that, it started a new service called Ola Cafe, an online food delivery service.
