Ola’s Micro service expands to 75 Indian cities, overtaking Uber
Indian ride-hailing platform, Ola, has claimed that it's newest and most affordable taxi service, known as “Micro”, is now bigger in terms of volume and service than Uber’s similar budget service in the country. The Bengaluru-based company points out that there has been an “immense uptake” for its micro category in smaller cities and towns, and executive, Raghuvesh Sarup, stated: “In just under 7 weeks of its launch, Ola Micro alone as a category, is larger than our nearest competitor as a whole…”, clearly referring to Uber’s Indian business. The service was trialed in three cities earlier this year, and has already become so successful that it has rolled out to over 75 cities across the country.

India's largest online taxi hailing firm Ola claims that its newest and most affordable category Micro is now bigger than the local unit of global rival Uber in terms of daily rides. Ola, which launched Micro just seven weeks ago, has now expanded the service across 75 cities in the country.

"In just under 7 weeks of its launch, Ola Micro alone as a category, is larger than our nearest competitor as a whole," said Raghuvesh Sarup, chief marketing officer and head of categories at Ola. "It has broken all the records and has become the fastest growing category on our platform."

Three weeks into the launch of Ola Micro, the company had claimed that the category was nearing the mark where it would be half as big as Uber and would overtake it a month's time. The statement at that time was seen as a retort to Uber's claims that it would overtake Ola by April.

Micro's meteoric rise to success according to Ola is due to its affordability - it costs Rs 6 per kilometer. "Two-thirds of the people riding on Ola Micro are new customers, while the remaining one-third are customers who were earlier inactive on our platform," added Sarup.

Ola did not share data to prove its claim citing confidentiality. Uber too declined to share data on the number of rides it was fulfilling in India on a daily basis.

Uber claims its rise in India has been just as vigorous. Eric Alexander, president of business in Asia for Uber, told Livemint in an interview in March that the company had grown from 5 per cent market share in January to a 50 per cent share by March.

"We are excited to see the growth and momentum we have picked over the last few months becoming the most popular ride-hailing app in India. It's all possible because of the product and technology that provides better value to our riders and drivers using our platform," said an Uber spokesperson on Wednesday.