HOW UBER AND OLA MAKE BUSINESS AND MONEY BUSINESS MODEL OF OLA AND UBER.ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd. is the name of the company under which Ola App operates. It’s headquartered in Bengaluru, India. Ola is basically an “On-Demand” Taxi Hailing Service using which people with smartphones can book a chauffeur driven cab in a driven by owners or helps of the owners of the cars. As of Last Fund Raise the company was valued at over 5 Billion USD.

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HOW UBER AND OLA MAKE BUSINESS AND MONEY
BUSINESS MODEL OF OLA AND UBER
By Dr.Mahboob ali khan Phd
ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd. is the name of the company under which Ola App
operates. It’s headquartered in Bengaluru, India. Ola is basically an “On-
Demand” Taxi Hailing Service using which people with smartphones can book
a chauffeur driven cab in a driven by owners or helps of the owners of the
cars. As of Last Fund Raise the company was valued at over 5 Billion USD.
One interesting thing to note is that Ola Cabs used to operate as a Fleet Cab
Service Provider during its earlier days, it used to work like this : You call upon
their call center, tell them the date and time of the trip and get a car at your door
step, you had to pay in cash to the driver when the trip ended, then it pivoted to
app based aggregation model seeing the meteoric rise of Android and Apple
Devices.
Ola Funding: Appx 1.5 Billion USD. (as of December 2015).
Ola Founders : Founded in 2010 by Bhavish Aggarwal & Ankit Bhati
Ola Valuation: As of Dec’ 2015: Appx 5 Billion USD
How Does Ola Make Money
Revenue Model of Ola
Well as stated earlier, Ola has been through its own set of ups and downs, pivots
and U-Turns with respect to (wrt) its Business and Revenue Model. When they
started out – They started out as a Taxi Rental Fleet Business (They owned the
Fleet). They had a call center which used to do bookings for customers who
wanted cabs. Pretty similar to Meru Cabs and others (Basically Radio Taxi but
unbranded and available on an 8hr 80 km kind of billing). But later on they
pivoted into an app based cab aggregation service (similar to Uber) and the rest
is history . Their revenue model is pretty similar to Uber’s with couple of
additions to it. Lets move on to it by first understanding How Ola Works.

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How does Ola Work
Customers to Open Ola App > Ola auto detects your Location via Phone’s GPS
> Shows Cabs of Various Categories (Mini, Prime, Sedan, State Transport Taxis
& Ola Share etc) Nearby > Customer to Tap on a Category of Choice > Click
Ride Now > Request is routed via Ola’s Servers and is prompted to the Ola Cab
Driver’s Cell Phone (if he is logged into the Ola Driver App) > If the driver
accepts the ride, you get confirmation message on screen with Driver Details >
Driver details sent to you on message and email > Click to call the Driver and
Co-ordinate > Complete the Ride > Payment Debited from your Ola Money
Wallet.
Business Model of Ola
The most significant contributor to Ola Cabs Revenue Model will be “X%
Commission from the total Fare of the Trip” e.g. Ranges from 15% to 20%
depending on the city and type of vehicle. Here is the list of various (current
and discontinued) Revenue Lines the company has.
You May also be Interested in: Uber Business Model
Please Note: There are 2 Apps being used simultaneously while the trips are
coordinated at Ola – One is used by the Cab Booking Consumer (i.e. You) and
the other is used by the Request Completing Driver called User App and Driver
App respectively Hereon.
Revenue Lines of Ola
1. Percentage Commission from Trips being served through its platform (Trip
Based Commissions)
2. Ola Money Wallet
3. Corporate Tie Ups / Event Tie Ups
4. Vehicle On-Boarding Fee
5. In-Cab Advertisements
6. Fleet Leasing (To Drivers)
7. Car Type
8. Peak Time Charges

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Trip Based Commissions
Customers use Ola User App to book chauffeur driven cabs because either they
don’t own a car or they do not want to use their own car for any reason. When
ever consumers click on ride now the screen lights up with Trip Request at the
nearest possible driver logged into the Driver App via Ola Algorithm and if the
driver rejects the request, it is instantaneously passed on to the next driver in the
queue. Which so ever driver accepts the request is presented with the location
and details of the customer to be picked up. Once the driver reaches the
destination (after dropping off the customer) he has to mandatorily click on
“End Trip” flashing on his device’s screen. Once this is done, the customers
payment is done via Ola Money Wallet (Pre-paid) or via Cash to the Driver.
P.S. The Customer can either click on Ride Now or Ride Later (pre-schedule
cabs as per desired date and time).
The Trip fare is a combination of:
 Travel Time (In Minutes) : Ola charges per Minute of Travel Time after an
initial free X minutes
 Distance Cost : Ola charges Per KM of Travel after an initial fixed fare
Distance (varies as per the type of cab)
 Waiting Time : In case you made the driver wait, additional waiting time
charges are levied to you
 Service Tax on the total trip fare
The Trip fare once charged to your ola money wallet is credited into the driver’s
account under the head of the trip number given to you in your bill copy if paid
via cash then equivalent amount of cash is deducted while making payment to
driver for the conducted trips.Ola deducts the Service Tax charged to consumer
first, then its commission percentage, then applicable income tax on the balance
amount and remits the rest of the amount to the drivers bank account at regular
intervals (3-7 Days ).
 Assuming Travel Cost Per Minute : 5 INR (Travel time 40 mins)
 Assuming Travel Cost Per KM : 15 INR
 Assuming Service Tax : 14.5%
 Assuming Total Travel : 30 KM, (First 5 KM @ 100 INR)
 Total Fare : 100+ 40*5 (Assumption 1) + 25*15 (Assumption 5 & 2) =
100+200+375 + = 675 + 14.5% of 675 (ST) = 675 + 98 = 773 INR
 Ola’s Commission : 675 * 20% = 135 INR + 98 (ST – Payable to Govt)

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 Driver’s Payout : 773 – 135 – 98 = 540 INR Less 10% TDS (As per Income
Tax Act) = 486 INR
This is the primary revenue line and the most simplistic answer to How does
Ola Make Money.
Ola Money Wallet
Ola Money wallet is a virtual wallet kind of a service which can make payments
at multiple vendor touch points including its own services of cab booking
payments. (Yes you guessed it right, it’s somewhat similar to PayTM Wallet or
FreeCharge Wallet etc).
This will make payment via TDR (Transaction Discounting Rate) to those
Merchants who will opt to accept payments via Ola Money Wallet.
Ola Money also contributes to How does Ola Make Money For a Better
Understanding on how Payment Gateways or Wallets Work, Please refer to the
below links:
 Payment GateWay Business Model
 How Virtual Wallets Work and Make Money
 Business Model Canvas of Ola Cabs
Corporate Tie Ups / Event Tie Ups
How does Ola Make Money from Corporate Tie Ups is a question that often is
asked by Newbies to the startup world or atleast those who don’t understand
what on earth is Ola doing by hiring corporate sales managers when majority of
its business is done from the app.
Well Ola Sales Managers actually meet admin heads of organizations and
convince them to use Ola Cabs for their corporate in city travel requirements,
No the admins don’t use the Ola App to book these rides, its done in a more
traditional way of calling or doing it via an API via a dashboard.
Rates are slashed down because of the larger demand from these corporates but
the volumes ensure sufficient cash flow to Ola from this business activity.

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Vehicle On-Boarding Fee
Ola May charge a slight fixed fee for the driver to become a part of Ola’s
aggregation model.
In-Cab Advertisements
Commuters may be offered Pamphlets or Live Streaming Ads from various
advertisers.
Fleet Leasing (To Drivers)
Ola announced that it would buy cars and lease it out to drivers for a better
loyalty of drivers towards the brand to ward off those drivers who used to be on
both (Uber and Ola’s) network. This may work like a fixed daily / weekly fee
to run the vehicle and the trip revenue going to the driver or a mix of fixed fee +
trip based commissions.
How does Ola Make Money from Car Type
Ola defines the type of Cars that it will call its Sedans, Compact Cars, SUVs
etc. The Fixed Per KM charges, Driver Waiting time and Per KM Travel
charges along with initial charges vary with the type of car chosen at the time of
booking. At the time of writing this article the car types are Mini, Sedan,
Prime, Share.
How does Ola Make Money from Peak Time Charges
At certain times when demand for Cabs outruns that of the supply of the cabs in
the nearby locations, Ola may push the per km and other rate slabs per type of
cab higher so as to generate more revenue. The rest of the calculations work in
the exact same way as Trip Based Commissions (First Revenue Line
Description).
The fare and other things go up in multiples like 1 to 4-5 anything.
Hope you now have the “Uber” understanding of How does Ola Make
Money orBusiness Model of Ola and you are now well adept at
answering How Ola Makes Money.