BENGALURU: Indian roads have always been a combat zone. But, for the past one year or so, the roads have been witnessing a new kind of contest. Ride-hailing services, Ola and Uber are battling it out for achieving supremacy in India’s 12 billion US dollar taxi market. The intense rivalry has grabbed the nation’s attention, with many industry experts labeling it as India’s “Taxi War”.

It all started in 2011 when Bhavish Aggarwal, an alumnus of IIT Mumbai founded Ola Cabs, based on the business model implemented by Uber in US. The app quickly became India’s premier cab aggregator through its aggressive pricing strategies and customer-oriented services. Two years later when Uber commenced its operations in India, the battleground was set for the clash of the taxi apps. Since then, the rivalry has seen the companies go to court many a times. Back in May, Uber sued Ola for 7.5 million US dollars alleging that the company had created about 94,000 fake user IDs to make false bookings.

Now, the competition between these two startups has reached an all new level with many multi-national investors coming on board. Last year, Ola was able to acquire an investment worth 500 million US dollars from Didi Chuxing of China. Didi Chuxing, the world’s largest cab aggregator, is also embroiled in a similar battle with Uber in China. According to Economic Times, Ola is also backed by A-list investors such as Softbank, Tiger Global, DST Global and others.

However, Uber is a company not to be bullied around by its rivals. If in any doubt ask its American rivals, Lyft and Gett. Uber recently got Tata involved in its India operations on a deal worth 100 million US dollars while also receiving a new 3.5 billion US dollar investment from Saudi Arabia for driving its global operations. With new investments coming in, it is expected that Uber will expand its coverage in India as it currently operates in mere 26 cities whereas Ola has a strong presence in almost 102 cities. Considering these recent developments in the investment front, it is certain that India’s Taxi War will not die down anytime soon.

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