Game of Thrones is racking up high television ratings, but here on the Indian roads another epic battle is raging. Uber and Ola are fighting to the death for taxi dominance, bringing down their rates and prices, and both claiming to be Numero Uno.
It’s hard to know who really is the dominant player. In 2015, Ola had claimed that it had 85% share of the taxi business in India.
Uber contradicted Ola a few weeks later, saying that Uber had 40% of the Indian market share in end 2015, up from 4% in January 2015.
Then in March this year, Uber’s Eric Alexander claimed that Uber had close to 50% market share, and would beat Ola in market domination by April.
By end April however, Ola stated that Ola Micro alone was bigger than all of Uber India combined.
Recently however, Truecaller released an analysis of its database of 130 million registered users, and found that 4.1% of all calls were made to Ola, while 1.6% of calls were made to Uber. The question here is a) is the database representative? And b) does this point to coordination problems for customers with Ola drivers, rather than a larger market?
The same Truecaller figures are a needle in Ola and Uber’s ballooning numbers. They show 94% of calls were to non Uber or Ola taxis. This could mean that both the so-called Goliaths are actually Davids battling over 6% of the market share.
Either way, the companies are slugging it out, cutting taxi prices and offering customers deals. Ola Micro, a small car version that launched in February 2016 is the company’s cheapest offering yet, with the price at Rs 6/km to Uber’s Rs 7/km price. However, Uber’s other offerings, including its minis and sedans are usually cheaper than Ola across India (uber fares and ola fares vary slightly across cities). Uber rates have held steady on average, at Rs 7/km for the Go and Rs 9/km for the sedans.
Uber is present in 68 countries, but Uber prices in India are now almost the lowest in the world. It costs around $1.3 to travel for 5 kms in an Uber in India. In England the same distance costs $16, and in Norway it crosses $32 (where only UberBlack is available).
Uber sees the Indian market as a crown jewel - customer behavior here is not yet set towards owning cars. Car ownership in India is low compared to developed markets - the US has around 800 cars per 1000 people, in Europe it’s around 500, and in China its approximately 150. India has just 18 cars per 1000 people.
Check out our infographic on the Uber Ola battle. We wait in the meantime, for part 2 of the series.
