SYSTEMS & OPERATIONS SOCIETY

Presents

COMPENDIUM
About Ola - :
Ola is India’s largest mobility platform and one of
the world’s largest ride-hailing companies,
serving 250+ cities across India, Australia, New
Zealand, and the UK. The Ola app offers mobility
solutions by connecting customers to drivers and
a wide range of vehicles across bikes, auto-
rickshaws, metered taxis, and cabs, enabling
convenience and transparency for hundreds of
millions of consumers and over 1.5 million driver-
partners. Ola’s core mobility offering in India is
supplemented by its electric-vehicle arm, Ola
Electric; India’s largest fleet management
business, Ola Fleet Technologies and Ola Skilling,
that aims to enable millions of livelihood
opportunities for India's youth. With its
acquisition of Ridlr, India’s leading public
transportation app and investment in Vogo, a
dockless scooter sharing solution, Ola is looking
to build mobility for the next billion Indians. Ola
also extends its consumer offerings like micro- OLA in India-:
insurance and credit led payments through Ola India’s taxi hailing market is valued at more than
Financial Services and a range of owned food $10 Billion. The market is expected to grow at a
brands through India’s largest network of CAGR of 13.7%. The increase is supposed to
kitchens under its Food business. Ola was happen due to changing lifestyles of travellers
founded in 2011 by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit
and increasing disposable income of consumers,
Bhati with a mission to build mobility for a billion
especially in Tier-I and Tier-II cities.
people.
time. After that the iOS app was taken over by
Ola - Initial Team Atul Manwar and android by Ankit Kumar and
backend APIs by Neeti Birla. The main focus of the
After the idea, the design and vision were done new releases is to make the app feature rich while
by Usha Loutongbam, product manager and constantly improving the user experience and yet
Bhavish himself. As for the developers who not losing the essence of one touch cab booking.
converted these ideas into reality: The first version
for Android was built by Ajinkya Potdar and for
iOS by Khushal Bokadey. Both of them joined the Ola - Name, Tagline &
company for two months of internship and did an Logo
excellent job rolling out the release in real quick
In Spanish, Hola translates to ‘Hello’ hence the
name Ola probably to indicate that their services Ola - Product
are as easy and friendly as that, just like saying a
‘hello’. Ola's logo is simple but styled as OLΛ. The Over the last one year, Ola has been expanding
logo also has an "O" which represents a tyre. its range of services —offering a range of ride
options from budget to luxury, subscription deals,
and more recently in-cab entertainment — to
outmatch Uber on strategies beyond pricing. The commercial papers and personal papers of driver
company also offers a service called Ola and operator. The drivers have flexibility to
Corporate for the companies. With Ola Corporate, decide their own time to login to OLA
people can track the travel expenses of their Application and accept requests for rides from
employees while also ensuring their safety. customers. They may choose to remain logged
out of the system as per their convenience. Ola
Ola also launched Ola Money,a mobile wallet,
takes a commission of an average 15% on all the
which makes it convinienet for riders to pay for
booking done through the app.
the rides.
Ola consider the following factors to create the
final bill for the user:
Ola - Business and
1: Base Fare- Charged Flat
Revenue Model 2: Distance Fare- Charged Kilometer
Ola's business model works on a simple concept. Wise (different for different cities)
OLA acts as a facilitator in providing cab- 3: Ride Time Fare- Charged time taken
booking services. Customers can book their cabs to travel
through the app. OLA does not own any of the
4: Peak Pricing- Direct Ratio depending
cabs. Only those drivers with valid permits duly
on demand for cab
authorized and verified by transport authorities
can sign up with OLA and they could be either 5: Service Tax- 5.6 %
self-employed or work for an operator who owns 6: Swacch Bharat Tax- 0.2%
multiple cars. Just like how we use the OLA App, 7: Toll Charges- Toll Collection in case
the drivers get access to a driver mobile app on
you cross Toll Junction on roads\
their Smartphone once they register with OLA.
This is done only after a thorough check of
authenticity and conducting due diligence of
OLA funding -:
Date Stage Amount Investor
July 2014 Series C USD 40 Million Steadview Capital
and Sequoia Capital
October 2014 Series D USD 210 Million SoftBank
Group,Tiger Global
and Matrix Partners
India
April 2015 Series E USD 403 Million DST Global, GIC and
Falcon Edge Capital
November 2015 Series F USD 500 Million Baillie Gifford, Falcon
Edge Capital, Tiger
Global, SoftBank
Group and DST
April 2017 Series G USD 260 Million SoftBank Group
May 2017 Series F USD 100 Million RNT Capital Advisors
and Falcon Edge
Capital
October 2017 Series G USD 1.1 Billion Tencents Holdings
and SoftBank Group
 September 2018 Series I USD 50 Million Sailing Capital
January 2019 Series J USD 74 Million Steadview Capital

Ola - Acquisitions and

Merger
Acquiring Date Startup Name Amount
March 2015 TaxiForSure USD 200 Million
November 2015 Geotagg Undisclosed
March 2016 Qarth Undisclosed
December 2017 Foodpanda USD 31.7 Million
April 2018 Ridlr Undisclosed

suitable media amplifiers and platforms.

OLA – Media Manager Role
Responsible for developing Media AOPs,
Media planning, buying and strategy and drive
the
- Support the Media Capability agenda with the
categories and Marketing team, both on the
specific capability sessions, but mainly during
the ongoing day by day work with the teams

Media Productivity agenda, in alignment with
the overall optimal Media to rides activation
planning for all the key marketing and
innovation platforms for the categories
represented under
ANI TECHNOLOGIES
- Being part of the marketing team partner with
Revenue management and Category teams to
develop the annual media plan and roadmap
for categories, aligning with Senior
Management,
Category teams & Media agency.
- Identify resources, competitive environment,
possible partners, opportunity areas, etc- and
together with the Marketing Director propose
the media plans and KPIs to ensure we build
- Maximise relationships with key TV, Print,
radio, cinema & digital media partners (i.e.
Star TV,
Viacom, Times of India, Facebook, Twitter,
Google, etc ], linking up closely with category
teams,
& other agencies to utilise partner added
value effectively
- Partner with business finance team &
revenue management and growth team to
agree common
measurement approach including scorecards,
tools for ROI & equity measurement using
relevant
KPIs and benchmarks. Collaborating to define
target digital share of media based on
econometric modelling meta-learnings and
category recommendations.
- Stay current on the strategic Media landscape
(consumers, competitors, media channels,
etc.)
and share this information with key
stakeholders
- Orchestrate the media planning, buying and
content launches for all brands. Deliver clear
reviews of activity performance vs. plan and
define future recommendations to optimise /
improve
media performance
- Support the Marketing head to benchmark
& negotiate Media Agency fees,
A&M budget
management to agency talent management -
inline with Smart Spend policies & savings
objectives.
- Drive the Media Productivity agenda - YOY
Savings- to ensure OLA is advantaged from a
media cost perspective
- Develop and execute the Media Buying AOP,
in collaboration with Media Agency and
develop
Media JBPs with key partners and drive cost
efficiencies for yearly media plans.
- Drive the annual media audit process, across
TV, Digital planning and buying with a 3rd party
auditor.
- Collaborate effectively with the finance, legal
and procurement teams to get the MSA's
and
payment processed for all vendors and agency
partners.
Questions to prepare for -:
Q: How would you plan and manage the
migration of API version 1 to API version
2?
Q: Walk me though a end-to-end feature
that you have delivered: Planning,
Execution etc.
Q: Everyone asked: "What do you want to
do in your career? How does the Program
Manager job fit your and Ola's
objectives?"
Q: Considering you have to launch Ola
Outstation Cab services and you are the
one responsible for it how would you go
about it?
Q: Consider that a new Coupon offering has
been added in the "Offers and Free Rides".
The user Taps on the "Offers and Free
Rides" in Ola App to add a coupon he has
received but sees a blank screen. What
could have gone wrong?
Ola vs Uber analysis-:
1. Trip type analysis
Uber Intercity (★)
Only allows real-time ride request.
A user can only request an Uber in real
time before the trip.
Only have One Way as a booking option.
Ola Outstation (★★★★★)
Supports Preschedule a trip.
- Users can have peace of mind after
booking their upcoming trip.
Supports Round Trip booking — full day
cab rental.
- Users can keep the car till return and
easily drive around the destination for any
additional sightseeing.
Better price.
-With a similar cost estimation to booking
two individual Uber Intercity trips, Ola
provides a full-day car + driver rental
service.
2. Drivers Profile
Uber (★★★★★)
NEWS -:
Good: Provide a comprehensive driver’s
profile with profile picture, rating, years with
Uber, previous passenger’s compliments,
achievements.
Ola Drivers Profile (★)
Bad: Only have a simple profile picture
with a rating.
Bad: Only share driver’s info with the
passenger one hour before the trip start
time.
Ola texts users with trip reminders
3. OTP
Ola drivers ask for OTP before boarding a
ride, adds a step to the customer journey
4. Ola presents “Ongoing ride” and
“Book New Ride” flows spontaneously,
which is confusing
5. Call Driver
Uber allows call over Internet using Uber
Call feature which is missing in Ola.
Interview Tips -:
1. Be mindful of the auto, taxi and food
delivery space.
2. Show logical flow while solving
cases
3. Be familiar with KPI of cab-hailing
space
1. Ola set up ‘Pre IPO Trust’ as it
targets public listing in 2 years ,
https://entrackr.com/2019/09/exclus
ive-ola-set-up-pre-ipo-trust-public-
listing-2-years/
2. Ola Bike expands to 150 cities
across India, aims to grow 3
times in next 12 months
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/ola-bike-
expands-to-150-cities-across-india-
aims-to-grow-3-times-in-next-12-
months/articleshow/71100945.cms
3. Soon, Rs 1000 fine on app-based
cabs for refusing ride in MP
//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/
70621568.cms?utm_source=contentofintere
st&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
4. Next pickup is London for Ola
//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/
70075567.cms?utm_source=contentofintere
st&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
5. Ola invests in Avail Finance, to
build financial solutions for
driver-partners
//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/
69989025.cms?utm_source=contentofintere
st&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst