Ola to buy cars from Nissan to expand its lease fleet
Yesterday, Indian ride-share giant Ola announced plans to purchase vehicles from Nissan’s local unit to expand its fleet, as it competes with Uber for a bigger share of the market. Ola expects to sign similar partnerships with other carmakers to achieve its target of adding 100,000 vehicles to its car leasing programme by the end of 2016. The company, through its subsidiary Ola Fleet Technology, will lease cars to its driver partners against a deposit and monthly rental which would include the vehicle's maintenance cost. After three years the driver has the option to own the car, it said in the statement. While Ola have not stated how many cars it will be buying from Nissan, it will be welcome news to the Japanese automaker, which has struggled to grow sales in India.

NEW DELHI: Taxi aggregator Ola seems to be going the radio taxi way. On Tuesday, it announced a tie-up with Nissan Motors to procure cars for lending them to its drivers.To this end, Ola had set up a separate unit, Ola Fleet Technology, earlier. Ola drivers can lease these cars from the aggregator and can even own them eventually, if desired, through instalments.The taxi aggregator, while setting up the Ola Fleet Technology division, had announced an initial investment of Rs 500 crore to buy cars and lease them to new drivers. "Ola recently rolled out a cab-leasing programme for driver-partners for which cars will now be purchased from both Nissan and Datsun brands," Ola said in a statement.It, however, did not disclose the number of vehicles that will be procured under the partnership The Ola Fleet Technology programme has a capital of over Rs 5,000 crore that will be infused for scaling up the leasing programme in 2016. Ola plans to partner with more carmakers to add over one lakh vehicles on its platform by the end of 2016.Through this partnership, Ola's subsidiary will make available vehicles to Ola driver-partners, creating employment and subsequently entrepreneurial opportunities for hundreds of thousands of them, Ola vice-president, strategic supply initiatives, Rahul Maroli said. "We look forward to more such partnerships in the coming months...to create mobility options customised for the Indian market," he added.Nissan Motor India managing director Arun Malhotra said the growth of the cab industry in India has been remarkable in the past couple of years.