Ola is ready to set its eyes on the intercity cab market, quoted an anonymous source from the company. The ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd plans to pilot this move in Delhi, that will help them boost revenue as well as use diesel cars on its platform that are banned from working in the city by the SC.

The service will pan out if it happens to be successful in Delhi.

Image: By PetarM / CC BY 4.0

The Softbank backed company said in a statement in March that it had 26,000 vehicles running on compressed natural gas (CNG). The company is said to have claimed to set aside INR200 crore to push CNG adoption.

The company will deploy its Mini and Prime categories for outstation rides, cited the above-mentioned anonymous sources.

“However, the company is promising drivers to reimburse them in the case of one-way trips, if they have to return without any passengers to Delhi. This may lead to some cash burn, but is a way of getting more drivers take those trips initially,” said the person.

The move comes as a close on heels of Ola closing its food and grocery delivery vertical after its year of launch, as it failed to scale up in order to focus more on transportation and stiff competition from Uber.

The food and grocery delivery services had launched in March and July last year and eventually got shut down in March this year.

Ola has so far focused on point-to-point drops in the city. It had offered outstation trips initially while starting out its operations in 2010. This apparent move is a definitive measure to scale up the company’s revenue and gaining roots in all possible modes of road transportation.

Uber is yet to enter the segment of inter-city travel.  Some of the online ride-hailing services which facilitate outstation travel are Meru Cab Co. Pvt. Ltd, Savaari Car Rentals, Roder and MyTaxiIndia Pvt. Ltd. The inter-city cab market is a highly unorganised segment with a potential of $4-6 billion because of the higher order values.

According to Siddhartha Pahwa, chief executive officer at Meru Cabs, overall contribution from inter-city trips to Meru’s overall business is phenomenal.

We’ve recently seen ixigo roll out the inter-city cab service to cater to this high potential but an unorganised segment. Uber seems to stay away from any of this as it urges forward to a strong foothold in the country.

Uber announced in July last year that the company would invest $1 billion in India.

Source: livemint

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ixigo’s cab aggregation app ‘ixigo cabs’ has taken the app world by storm. Available on Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, ‘ixigo cabs’ has emerged as one of the fastest growing player in the category with over 200K app downloads in a time period of six months.

Over a short span of time, ixigo has partnered with more than 10 such app-based taxi and auto-providers across 150 cities in India. As a cab-rental aggregator, ixigo cabs helps travellers look up cabs on multiple platforms at the same time simplifying the process for travellers and allowing them to book low-priced cabs. Few popular cab-rental brands that are available in the app are Uber, Ola, Meru and Jugnoo. Interested travellers can search the cabs with details like fares, ETAs and surge pricing.

Commenting on the same, Alok Bajpai, co-founder and CEO of ixigo, stated:

“Cabs is our fastest growing category with over 200% QoQ growth without any marketing spend. We are now the clear market leaders in the cabs meta-search space, topping 1000 rides per day on app based providers and another 1000 calls per day to offline taxi companies for half-day & full-day hires. We expect to triple these numbers by March.”

One of the key reasons to the rapid growth of ixigo as a brand is the integration of ixigo cabs in two of its mobile apps viz ‘ixigo flights & hotels’ and ‘ixigo trains’. Due to this integration, it has a reach of over 8 million travellers. ixigo also launched its services on Micromax and Yu devices as an exclusive part of the ‘Around Yu’ product offering.

To expand its business network, ixigo has recently associated with many travel firms. It has partnered with BlaBlaCar for inter-city ride-sharing service and acquired Rutogo – the leading inter-city cabs aggregator of India. Elaborating on the same, Venus Dhuria, Business Head of ixigo Cabs, quoted:

“The total market size of the Indian taxi industry is approximately $9 billion. Out of this, nearly $1 billion is organized and $8 billion is still an unorganized market. There are about 2.5 million taxis across India of which around 0.6 million are in the organized intra-city space while the rest are in the unorganized space, mostly running on inter-city routes. We will deepen our partnerships with established app-based cab providers and will also work with select reputed taxi vendors and fleet owners in the inter-city market to serve our travellers who already look at cabs as an alternative to trains and buses on short and medium distance routes.”

With this year coming to an end, ixigo has outperformed many of its competitors in the travel industry. How successful will it be in the coming year is yet to be seen.

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Domestic Tourism is growing exponentially in India. The young Indian travellers are wanting to explore every corner of the diverse country with family, friends or solo. Of course, their experiences are varied, but they have a few common demands to improve the conditions of travelling in India.

Taking this into account, HolidayIQ.com conducted a survey which included 20,000 participants from 30 Indian cities and towns. HolidayIQ.com, founded by Hari Nair, is the of the largest travel information portal in India allowing people to plan holiday and share their experiences.

Here are some of the key elements from HolidayIQ’s report:

(Image Credits: Image by Smeet Chowdhary/ CC BY 2.0)

• The trains need to be cleaner

HolidayIQ.com, through its survey, found out that 83% of the Indian travellers requested for cleaner trains. Train connectivity is excellent in India but trains are not maintained properly. They are unhygienic and the new ones get damaged quickly. Better maintenance is essential by the railways authorities. Needless to say, on our part, we need to take the correct measures to keep our environment spick and span.

• WiFi for remote area visits

It also brought to light that many Indian travellers want WiFi hubs for the remote area visits. WiFi access is considerably relevant as its connectivity helps you obtain information about the tourist destinations, the navigation feature will give you a sense of direction while exploring the landscapes and social media will assist you in updating your friends about your latest adventures. For your safety, through Google Maps, you can let your friends know about your current location and the places you are planning to visit in the upcoming days. For business purposes, emails can be exchanged between you and the receiver. Also, while travelling in the train you can know your distance from the destination by using Google Maps. Rail Yatri, an independent railway site for mobile users, is already including this feature on its website. WiFi empowers you and almost gives you a new lease of life. Unfortunately, WiFi connectivity is not that easily accessible in many regions of the country. There have been plans and initiatives since 2006 but they have not been quite successful. To read more about such initiatives, read here.

• Cab fares to be standardized:

Moving around in towns and cities can be unexpectedly expensive. Trusted cab services like Ola, Meru Cabs and Uber do not run everywhere. This allows local cab drivers of such places to over-charge the visitors of the town. HolidayIQ.com survey concluded that 62% of the Indian travellers wanted cab rates to be standardized. Obviously, standardizing it will not be a simple process. Why do we say that? For the simple reason that states in India work autonomously and so does the central governing body. The states will not be ready to fall under the Central governing body. This being the case one possible solution is that the states can implement a standard per kilometre rate the hired cabs run. For a better control, states can be divided into zones and then the per unit rates can be fixed. If this gets implemented, the new visitors of a city won’t have to bother about being tricked as they’ll be aware of the price rates.

• Solo Travel

Though not that widely practiced in India yet, solo travel is highly demanded by Indian travellers. The survey concluded that 56% of the travel junkies would love to travel alone. Of course, travelling alone can be extremely refreshing, but the biggest concern going solo in India is safety. Crime rate of India is high which makes the travelers vulnerable to it.

For more details regarding the survey conducted by HolidayIQ, you can visit this website.

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