UpGrad Product Management

Competitor Analysis

Student Name: Anjani Kumar Singrodia

Introduction to the
Company
Your Submission
To do a comprehensive competitive study of the cab market and understand the underlying mechanics of the industry for Meru Cabs, we need
to first identify who Meru Cabs are competing against and this should include direct competitors as well as players in the market who may be
indirectly influencing the audience that Meru is fighting for. Couple of major direct competitors of Meru Cabs are Ola Cabs and Uber. However
the last 10 years has seen tremendous growth in creating more eco-friendly transit options in all tiers of Indian cities including Buses as well as
Metro railways. However for the purpose of this analysis I have chosen to compare Meru Cabs against Ola Cabs.

1. Compare the company backgrounds of Ola Cabs and Meru Cabs.

2. Compare the business models of Ola Cabs and Meru Cabs.
3. Compare the strengths and weaknesses of Ola Cabs and Meru Cabs.
4. Compare the product details and performances of Ola Cabs and Meru Cabs.
5. Based on the above study, Predict the future initiatives of Ola Cabs so as to take necessary steps and mitigate giving up competitive
advantage.

Note: The sources for the above comparison for each slide is written in their notes section.
2
Company background
Ola Cabs
To bring convenience, price transparency and standardization to consumer
booking car rentals and cab services Bhavish Aggarwal[1]
Goals
Olas mission is to bring all the car operators and taxis on to a single platform and
at the same time empower their driver partners to grow professionally,
Mission economically as well as personally.
Olas strategy is to focus on the backend interface and ensure a high standard of
quality and predictability with respect to consumer experience.
Strategy
LinkedIn page of Ola suggests that the company employs between 5000 10000
people. Apart from the operations team in locations Ola is present, the company
Current Employees is headquartered in Bangalore, India. Apart from full time employees, Ola
partners with over 4,50,000 drivers all over India.
Ola Cabs has raised over $1.2 billion in 8 rounds of funding from leading venture
firms like Tiger Global, Softbank Group, DST Global and others. Their latest round
Funding was of $500 million from Didi Chuxing, Ubers major competitor in China.
From the 2014-15 data available, Ola generated about INR 420 Crores. However
that amount was also accompanied by INR 750 Crores loss indicating the high
Revenue details cost of user acquisition and driver retention for the company.
Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal are graduate from IIT Bombay 2009 and 2008
batch respectively. Ankit worked at startups QED42, Makesense and Wilcom
Founders profile after completing his dual degree in Mechanical Engg. whereas Bhavish worked at
Microsoft for 2 years after his B.Tech in CSE before starting up with Ola Cabs.
Meru Cabs
Merus goal is to provide world class taxi service to every demographic that they
cater to and be a hallmark for reliable, high quality service in the industry.
Meru derives its name from Mount Meru which, according to Hindu mythology,
can withstand any amount of turbulence and hence is known for unshakable
reliability. It is this reliability with which they want to serve the customers in the
most efficient way for the perfect experience.
Merus strategy is to control the experience provided to the user so they started
by purchasing cars and then franchised the cars to drivers, who in turn had to go
through professional training before they went on the road.
The leadership team of Meru cabs comprises of individuals with over 15 years of
experience each in their respective fields. Meru Cabs is headquartered in Mumbai
and has more than 500 employees. Meru Cabs has a fleet size of 20000+.
Meru Cabs was started with an equity stake to India Value Fund(IVF), a private
equity fund. Meru Cabs has been a sustainable business since the beginning,
recently though the company has raised $75 million in 2 rounds to increase brand
salience and brand awareness from Brand Capital and IVF.
Meru Cabs is one of the only cab company to nearly break-even with a total
revenue of about INR 600 Crores. Meru Cabs also recently integrated its service
with Google Now and Facebook Messenger Bot which game them a decent burst
in bookings.
Neeraj Gupta, founder and Managing Director of Meru Cabs partnered with IVF
to create Meru Cabs and has led the company since 2007. Prior to this, he setup
Mumbais largest fleet service business.
Business Models

Ola Cabs Meru Cabs

Ola Cabs in the span of 6 years has become Indias largest cab service provider in Meru Cabs strategy seems to be to strengthen its service, technology and
terms of presence as it has now spread its wings to 75 Indian cities, almost product first and then look to expand. They are now present in 24 cities in India
Presence covering all of Tier 2 cities. and their next step is to increase their presence.

Target market for both Ola cabs and Meru cabs is the same. The whole idea of private-car-turned-cab service was to counter the increased monopoly of taxis making
life miserable for consumers by overcharging them/declining to go somewhere. People want to book a cab instantly, they dont want the hassle of arguing over fare
Target market with the drivers and go anywhere they want to with the cab. This is the target market for both Ola and Meru cabs.

With the growth in its product, Ola has been able to create multiple avenues of
revenue generation for itself. First, percentage commission from the trips
completed by a partner-driver. This may range from 15%-30% depending on car
type or city. Secondly, by corporate tie-ups or event tie-ups, Ola offers heavy
Revenue Model discounts to passengers from a company or an event. This is often offset by the
volume of bookings done through them. Thirdly Ola started its own virtual wallet
called Ola money and charges merchants based on transaction discounting rate.
Ola started its own car leasing service to provide drivers who dont own one.
Ola cabs started out in 2010 as a fleet rental service and owned a bunch of cars
Past shifts in as did others in the competition at the time. However it soon realized that to
grow exponentially it has to give up on owning the fleet and assume more of an
business model aggregator role, like its international rival Uber.
From their driver partners Meru has 2 models: 1. Meru leases the car to the
driver and driver pays a fixed amount to Meru per day. 2. Driver owns the car and
Meru takes a commission of 15-25% of the daily fare. In both the cases Meru
promises to provide at least a fixed number of rides per day.
Also Meru owns about 50% of its fleet and a lot of their cars ply to the city
Airport. This gives them plenty of visibility and sets the cars up as an advertising
platform.
When Meru started they owned all of their fleet and only had model 1 going for
them. However a driver strike in 2012 made them more open to the idea of a
revenue share model and hence they started model 2.
Strengths and Weaknesses

Ola Cabs Meru Cabs

Purely a cab aggregator position, so easier to expand.
Being #1 cab provider in India, Ola has been able to secure multiple rounds of
Strengths VC funding thus offsetting the loss it is making.
More segmentation of cab services for example Ola Prime for sophisticated
rides with free wifi, Lux for luxury rides, XL for renting SUVs.
Customer service falters a lot of time because of lack of training for the
drivers.
Highly inorganic user growth leads to high marketing spend and thus business
Weaknesses making huge loss.
Due to a lack of clear state regulations, Ola often has to change aspects about
their product in a short time.
Drivers misbehaving in terms of navigation, denial, and app abuse etc affecting
the brand image of Ola.
Charging the user multiple times
Pain points Drivers often complaint of payment delays.
Baseless surge pricing on rides.
Lack of proper training for drivers on app use.
Meru training academy prepares the drivers for giving consistently good
experience to the customers.
Revenue model is sustainable so customer acquisition and growth is organic.
Until recently Meru Cabs used to operate from the city airports giving them a
very important connection with the authorities.
Owning a chunk of their fleet increases the investment required for moving
into a new city.
Meru is a 9 year old company with only 2 rounds of VC funding. This largely
limits its ability to compete against its competitors Ola, Uber with deep
pockets.
Bugs in app/ app crashing.
Poor customer service.
Driver refusal to service.
One of the major pain points is that Meru notifies the customer about
unavailability of cabs, in terms of advance booking, very late.
Product details and performances

Ola Cabs Meru Cabs

Ola has classified the different cabs available on their platform into Micro, Mini, Meru Cabs fleet is very standardized. They have two categories; regular and
Prime, Lux, Auto and Shuttle. They have also introduced shared rides in select Genie (for hatchback). They also have intercity booking option. They have also
Product Details cities as well as hourly rentals and outstation bookings. introduced a new feature of roadside pickup where-in you first physically pickup
your ride and then get the app to connect each other using cabID.
iOS - Data not available iOS - Data not available
Android 10M 50M Android 1M 5M
# of downloads Windows - Data not available Windows - Data not available
Blackberry - Data not available
iOS Rated 3.5 with 5680 reviews iOS Rated 3.5 with 1118 reviews
Android Rated 4.0 with over 513,420 reviews Android Rated 3.8 with over 50,111 reviews
App Ratings Windows Rated 3.4 with over 7227 reviews Windows Rated 3.8 with 322 reviews
Blackberry Rated 2.9 with 493 reviews
Ola was one of the first cab service provider to launch smart phone app. It Meru Cabs was the latest in launching an app for the exponentially growing smart
certainly has done its analysis about the UI and UX given the amount of people phone population in India and hence they opted to go for a cross platform app
using the app. The UI is very intuitive and doesnt jump around a whole lot while instead of native apps for each OS. This restricted the native design and
User Experience making a booking. experience for the users. UI as well is not too great as the user has to go though
multiple clicks before he/she can book a cab which is the primary functionality of
the app.
Great design. Ola Cabs has always been looking at its competitor, not just From a design standpoint the app raises a lot of questions about the placement of
Overall nationally but also internationally. Ola took some of its design patterns from Uber its UI elements. Functionality wise the app works well. However there are a few
and modified it to serve its own needs. terms in apps which remains unexplained to the user in terms of category
functionality definition, fare type etc.
Future initiatives and steps to mitigate
From the above comprehensive study of Ola Cabs, it is clear to say that Ola Cabs strategy is to capture new market share, so it is looking to
expand to all of Tier 2 and possibly Tier 3 cities. As well as they are trying to increase their product offering by serving every possible niche
category where a group of people might want to rent a cab such as Sedans, SUVs, Luxury, Hourly rental, Outstation etc. We might see a
couple more categories coming up before Ola exhausts its offering. Ola may also in future go the Uber way and offer a product for business
logistics needs like food delivery, grocery delivery etc. although they did not succeed in the logistics domain on its own, a B2B offering would
help reduce the downtime for its driver partners.

So it is up to Meru Cabs to decide if it is comfortable in its niche and stay its own course or if they want to compete with the deep pockets of Ola
Cabs and Uber and make it a bloody fight.