On Thursday, Bangalore headquartered and India’s largest cab aggregator Ola has made a big announcement that it is going to launch its self-drive car business in India by 2020. The company said that it is planning to host a fleet of 20,000 self-drive cars by next year. The company also said that the number of vehicles in a fleet would be more than half of the entire industry put together.
At present, the self-drive car rental business in India is dominated by apps such as Zoomcar, Drivezy, Revv, Voler, Myles and Avis. Zoomcar maintains the biggest car fleet amongst all, with 10,000 cars, Zoomcar is the largest player in the business.
As per the data available, the Indian car rental business generates a revenue of over $250 million last year and is expected to touch $570 million by 2023. Moreover, there were around 12 million users of car rentals in 2018, which are expected to grow to over 16 million by 2023.
The company’s new service business initially will roll out in Bengaluru followed by Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai. The company said that it would design their business in such a way so that the costumers could design their package, from controlling the number of kilometres, hours to fuel inclusion, everything possible. The freedom to create their own packages would make the service highly customisable and would also allow costumers to save up to 30 per cent over other players in the industry.
Chief Sales and Marketing Officer at Ola, Arun Srinivas “We are very excited to launch the Ola Drive category to consumers, a big step towards building a holistic shared mobility landscape in India. India’s car-sharing market has immense potential and opportunity, which is yet to see a large-scale investment in technology and operations to make the model viable.”
At present, Ola is serving costumers in over 250 cities and is known for transforming the car-sharing market in India. After launching the self-drive services, the company is planning to introduce long-term subscription and corporate leasing.
