3 Reasons Why I Believe OLA Has Lost Its Mojo

Just last year, I was writing praises of Ola’s product mix that allowed it to have the upper hand over Uber. In fact, I was so happy with Ola’s product strategy that not only did I endorse Ola Select’s benefits to all my friends & colleagues and open a corporate account with them but also swore to use OLA exclusively in India. However, in the past few months I have consistently found myself choosing Uber over Ola and (after much deliberation) I can hone it down to 3 main reasons.
1. Ola Select No Longer Offers a Compelling Value Proposition
For those who don’t know, Ola Select offers 4 main benefits:

  1. Ride without Peak Pricing
  2. Skip Booking queue
  3. Prime at Mini-Fares
  4. Free Wi-Fi during the ride

Initially, Ola used to charge Rs. 499 per month to avail Ola Select. Gradually they started increasing this price until it added up to a whopping Rs. 1999 a couple of months ago.
Since my monthly commute costs less than Rs. 5,000, the steep increase in the subscription cost was economically unfeasible. I felt as though Ola’s management was price gouging me and it broke my trust. I heard similar gripes from many who were regular Ola Select customers.
However, when I opened my app today, I found a discounted monthly subscription price had dropped to Rs. 1299, at the cost of capping the surge protection at Rs 75 per ride. It looks like someone at Ola noticed the drop in the subscriptions and attempted to salvage it with this move.
If I assume that Rs 75 equates to a 25% benefit per ride, then it works out to an average bill of Rs. 375 or a 25-kilometre trip which is rare for someone travelling within Mumbai (or most cities except Delhi & Bangalore). Even if I assume that I took those many trips in a month, it would still take 20 rides before the subscription paid for itself and 40 if I wanted to get any additional value out of it. Therefore, Ola Select would make sense to someone who was regularly spending Rs. 15,000 (40 x Rs. 375) on Ola per month – a rarity in Mumbai.
The biggest guffaw of this pricing strategy is that the normal Ola rides are now directly competing with Ubers prices and often, I end up opening both apps to see availability and pricing before I book my ride. This is something I do not recall doing when I was a Select member.
2. Untrained/Greedy Cab Drivers
The quality of Ola drivers has been steadily dropping over the past 12 months, but it has dived off a cliff over the last 3 months. On multiple occasions, drivers have hesitated to arrive unless they know the drop off location or cancelled the trip if it is short or payment isn’t going to be made in cash. Off-late, I observed the most alarming trend in Hyderabad & Bangalore wherein drivers want me to cancel my trip after they arrive and settle with them in cash for a discounted rate below the original trips pricing quote. Clearly, something is going on at Ola that is causing such drivers to be recruited and retained.
3. Filthy Car Quality
Ola’s fleet is ageing rapidly. Their quality assurance teams seem to have gone on vacation since the tablets have stopped working, in-car Wi-Fi is non-existent, the cars are well dented, have their paint scrapped off in many places and have not had their interiors cleaned in months. If Ola assumes that their riders will take 25-kilometre trips in these vehicles, the least they can do is to ensure that their vehicles are providing a comfortable commute.
The overall Ola experience has left a lot to be desired.
The loyal Ola users are now looking for better options and it isn’t a coincidence that Uber has newly launched its Premier vehicles campaign. It assures the rider that they shall enjoy new vehicles and highly recommended drivers for their trip – at no monthly cost at all!

Time to buck up or it’s going to be hasta la vista, Ola!
72/2018

Your discounting campaign is suffocating your business!


Uber & Ola have finally found out that their long-term discounting campaign only helped in distorting the market. However, markets will eventually come back to normal and the fuel behind the discounting campaign (read: investor cash) will dry up as investors focus on the real numbers that drive a business i.e. profits & margins.
Many founders continue to be inspired by the discounting campaign tactic but the economist in me will tell you that long term discounting will cause more harm than do good for your venture. Therefore, any strategy that involves a discounting tactic should have a clear objective backed by an expiry date.
What is discounting?
Discounting is different than having a pricing advantage i.e. a cheaper cost base for providing a product/service. Discounting means that you have decided to take a cut on the margins that were promised by your business plans to achieve an objective. It could be to get rid of old inventory or to gain significant market share in a short span of time. On the other hand, a cheaper cost base allows the venture to provide the product/services at a cheaper price while maintaining promised margins.
Why are you discounting?
Discounting works best in a market where the product/service offered is homogenous and the customer will be inspired in choosing your offering over the others is a discount. Many founders use this example to defend a long-term discounting campaign but I counter that if your venture is a new entrant and it offers no other significant advantage over your competitors expect its deeply discounted price, then why are you entering that crowded universe when you have no other significant advantage?
Some founders will argue that discounting can also be used for snatching away market share as a new entrant in a crowded market or a market dominated by a few players. I can agree with that view and this may lead to a temporary influx of customers but those initial numbers are irrelevant. Only those customers who come back for a repeat purchase are important because they have made a shift in their buying habits because of what they experienced the first time they bought your product/service at discount and were motivated enough to come back and buy it at a full price.
What happens in most cases with founders is that they get scared of removing the discount because they will reveal the real numbers of the business which they themselves do not know nor want anyone else to know.  Then that discount tactic becomes a strategy to distort investors perception and most importantly their own.
When should you use discounting?
The most important decision before embarking on a discounting campaign is the frequency you expect your customer to engage in the behaviour of buying the product/service whether it was from you or your competitor. Next you can figure out how many times a customer needs to buy from your venture so that initial discount pays for itself from future margins. If the answers to anyone of these questions is over a year, then the discounting strategy shouldn’t be pursued because the return on the investment in discounting is too far out for it to make profitable sense to pursue. Secondly the long period to profitability from discounting a customer has inherent challenges as many new entrants come into the market and the there is a risk of a change in customer behaviour which would lead to the entire investment in discounting becoming a complete loss.
Alternatively, if your average customer has the propensity to make multiple purchases from you in a year such that the initial or interim discounting campaign pays off quickly it makes economic sense to pursue a discounting campaign to attract the customer, gain the customers loyalty and enjoy the temporary increase in revenues.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, I continue to see business models & MIS reports that are pursuing discounting campaigns with scant regard for the economics of the campaign. These founders are revelling in the temporary high that the vanity metrics bring to them, blissfully unaware that the business is dying a slow & painful death as the discounts eat away at the foundations of the business.
If you as a founder are thinking about pursuing a discount campaign, please think through the economics of the campaign viz how will the initial discount pay for itself? how long will that take? what is the return of the investment in the discount? what is the probability of that achieving that return?
Without adequate thought and planning behind a discounting campaign you’re just gambling with your business and if you want to run a gambling business then open a casino.

Ola gets its product mix right! 

Whosoever dreamed up Ola Select & Ola Play for ANI Technologies (DBA Ola Cabs) should be given a raise & promotion! 
Finally, Ola has created divergence in the radio taxi market by providing a product with a clear differentiator to Uber and caters to the pent up frustration that Uber loyalists (like myself) have with the largest cab aggregator in the world.
For the uninitiated, Ola Select is a member service at Rs. 499 per month (quarterly or half-yearly packages are cheaper) and in return Ola provides 

  • Prime taxis at Mini rates (i.e. Uber X at Uber Go rates) 
  • Zero surge pricing  
  • Priority booking  
  • Latest model cars 
  • Highest rated drivers 


Ola Cabs with specially modified tablets, controlled by the riders Ola app, are called Ola “Play” cabs. The tablet, provides video & audio content on demand. The audio content is provided by Apple Music and the video content includes the Kapil Sharma Show, TVF, AIB, etc. Everything from the volume to the selection of content is controlled by the rider (through the app). Most interestingly if the rider leaves any content mid-way, the app remembers that and starts the content exactly where it was left – brilliant!

I have been an Uber loyalist for the past 2 years but, a couple of incidents in the past few months had frustrated me with the largest cab aggregator in the world. It was my opinion that Uber took its Indian customers for granted. The Uber cabs weren’t clean, their customer service staff sent rude replies and I realised that their “surge” pricing wasn’t based on any law of supply and demand as they claimed.
Ola tapped into that frustration by providing a promised “Zero Surge” and with the personalised & elite product like Ola Select & Ola Play they have captured my interest and delighted me to make me promote them here!
This is a lesson for any startup (Flipkart are you listening?) that Ola isn’t cheaper than Uber for the same distance but they (I believe) have tapped into the frustrations of the Uber customers with a product at an affordable price to win them from Uber. Ola isn’t giving these premium services for free but by charging a fee they ensure that the customer will use them on priority for the duration of their membership – it’s a brilliant move where they make money on both ends!
How Uber responds to this (if at all) will be interesting to watch… If Uber response is to get into another price war to win the consumer’s loyalty they will be well advised to memorise the age-old quote from Benjamin Graham

Price is what you pay, Value is what you get

Uber Goes Free For The Week- my thoughts

Uber is free for you if you pay via the Uber wallet (T&C: 5 FREE rides up to Rs. 300 per ride).
This is of course a great way to increase wallet usage (something which Ola has cracked very well), though such ‘predatory pricing’ activities are bound to attract wrath from the auto and taxi industry.
From an earlier comment by Anirudh Damani (Managing Partner at Artha Venture Partners) :
My family is an investor into a taxi booking company so let me be clear that we follow this space closely and we may or may not see higher values for the investment but what I have seen in this space in the last 6 months is disrupting the lives of many taxi drivers and fleet owners.
Here are the major issues I see:
1. These cab companies are selling below cost… this is obvious when you take account of the recent strikes that hordes of drivers of the taxi-booking companies went on strike as they were out of fuel! They get the subsidized amount from the customer which is not enough to put fuel into the car and the “credit” or difference comes a week later. Are they supposed to physically push the car until then?
We invested in this space as booking a taxi simply by a click makes things easier for the riders and gives incremental revenue to the driver which they didn’t have earlier. It is a pure win-win and net positive for society.
“We will organize this unorganized market” – That is what the pitches used to say…
But right now, we have companies that are selling at unsustainable prices which will drive out all small players and leave the industry in the hands of a few.. this is exactly the opposite of what should be achieved.
This era of free money will come to an end.. and we will be left poorer as a society especially a cab driver who right now is making spending decisions and investment decisions that he/she will not be able to complete.
Isn’t this what happened in the housing boom with free money and no controls? Will we ever learn?
2. Rules are being flouted by unlicensed players that have scant regard for any of the laws in the country… what is very interesting (and sickening) is that it is our own local companies that are flouting the laws relating to taxation, KYC, labour, etc.
In the name of adding supply some of them are paying off taxi drivers through pre-paid cards that are registered in the name of the company and not in the name of the user – is this what we want to call “fair” competition? Is this even legal?
When foreign money is being doled out without KYC and without any trace on the money.. what stops that from being used for means that are anti-social?
What happens when the ED. IT, FEMA, FERA, EOW, Service Tax authorities catch hold of these erring companies and shut the show?
What if it is too late by then?
The show is on right now.. and it’s all beautiful.
Once the song stops.. you will see that we have destroyed whatever semblance of sanity there was in this space.”
Good for consumers. But what about the industry?
Are parts becoming greater than the sum? Think about it while you enjoy the ride.
(Article published by NextBigWhat on 27/11/2014, containing excerpts from a comment I left on a previously published article on the same platform titled The Big Battle Between Funded Taxi Startups And The Rest.)