Hail a ride now! Uber, Ola to resume services in key cities from today

With further relaxation of lockdown regulations and more powers given to states, Ola will be restarting services in over 60 cities across the country from Tuesday.

Customers in Delhi, Bengaluru and other key cities have a reason to smile as cab aggregators – Uber and Ola – will resume their car and three-wheeler operations from Tuesday.

With further relaxation of lockdown regulations and more powers given to states, Ola will be restarting services in over 60 cities across the country from Tuesday.

These also include Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Mysuru, Mangaluru and Hubli-Dharwad among others. The areas it will cover include Karnataka, Haryana, Chandigarh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu (except Chennai), Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Assam. With this, Ola will now be available in over 160 cities across the country.

ALSO READ: Uber to lay off 3,000 workers in second cut for May, trip requests drop 80%

In a statement, after resumption of services in more cities, Ola said, “This will bring relief to millions of driver partners whose livelihoods depend on serving citizens on a daily basis.” Ola also added it is taking all enhanced safety protocols, which include compulsory mask usage, social distancing and complete sanitisation of cars after trips, among other steps.

Uber, on the other hand, will restart services in 13 more cities from Tuesday, increasing coverage to over 35 cities. The new cities that it will enter include Mysuru, Amritsar, Mohali, Faridabad, Jalandhar, Patiala apart from Delhi and Bengaluru.

Both the car aggregators had restarted operations a few weeks ago when they were permitted under the rules to operate from orange and green zones across the country.

Indians are entrepreneurs at heart: Tata Sons Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata

"... a highly successful entrepreneur will find opportunities are greater in markets outside of India, so that is a judgment call the entrepreneur makes," Tata said.

Business Standard : In a fireside chat at an annual event organised by venture capital firm Chiratae Ventures, Tata Sons Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata talked about the importance of start-ups in India, their positive rub on bigger companies, and the levers that he looks for when investing in start-ups.

Referring to the growth of the ecosystem of smaller companies, Tata — in a conversation led by Sudhir Sethi, founder of Chiratae Ventures – said: “We are looking at the India of tomorrow and the day after, and the start-up industry is entering the global field in a manner where competition is open.” Himself an investor in a clutch of mostly early online ventures that include Ola, Paytm, Lenskart, and Urban Ladder, Tata began actively investing after he stepped down from Tata Group in December 2012.

So, what made him pursue that route and what did he specifically look for in the companies and the entrepreneurs that he bet on? “It was partly by accident and partly by happenstance but always in my years at Tata Group, I had looked at the sector with excitement. But there was also conflict with the group (businesses) and so when I was free, I made token investments with my own money in what I considered exciting,” Tata said, adding that “contrary to popular belief my pockets aren’t that deep”.

He went on to add that the exercise became a learning process for a few years because of the highly dynamic nature of the sector. “I found in my case that company selection was more by intuition rather than numbers, and by judging on the intent of founders and their seriousness more than any other factor to make (my) decisions, good or bad as the case may have been.”

Does Tata have a formula for what makes the best entrepreneurs? “I would say what drives entrepreneurs is a fire in the belly to do business better than has ever been done before, and an opportunity to make a difference to benefit society, with the tenacity and courage to see it through,” Tata said.

When asked if start-ups that were burning cash over extended periods were sustainable, Tata declined to comment but said the right time to go global for any start-up was ultimately not defined by anything but by the founder. “... a highly successful entrepreneur will find opportunities are greater in markets outside of India, so that is a judgment call the entrepreneur makes,” he said.

Equally, most entrepreneurs end up failing. So does Tata, who was privy to an arena of new contestants, have a checklist of indicators of failure for new companies? “It’s an insight on the founders and I don’t think there is a single answer, but the issue is of the clarity of the founder, the seriousness committed to building an enterprise with someone else’s money and the reality that not every enterprise will have glory all the way through.”

PhonePe's super-app platform 'Switch', a one stop solution for customers

Aims to provide one-clock entry to entry point to several online merchant platforms on 'PhonePe Switch'.

Business Standard : PhonePe, a Fllipkart Group company which started its journey in late 2015 as a startup focusing on digital payments, is all set for its next phase of journey by hosting other online commerce apps on its platform and driving traffic and facilitating transactions. The Bengaluru-based firm, starting today, unveiled a new in-app section called 'PhonePe Switch' which acts as a 'super app' integrating several other merchant apps and provide its 150 million odd users a single platform for their various online shopping needs.

"PhonePe Switch emphasises our efforts to build a partner app ecosystem which offers our users a very convenient way to access and engage with multiple apps," said Sameer Nigam, co-founder and CEO, PhonePe. “While start-ups are able to acquire high-quality users at low costs, larger partners get help in specific areas like driving non-cash payments, growing their business in select geographies etc.,” he added.

Currently managing around 50 such apps in categories such as food, travel, local commuting, grocery and others, the payments firm expects the number to touch 500 by the year end. Some of the third-party apps that are currently hosted on its platform include Ola, Eat.Fit, Grofers, IRCTC and MakeMyTrip. A PhonePe user can access, say, the Ola app, from within PhonePe without having to log into the Ola account or come out of PhonePe.

“PhonePe Switch and the other financial services products we are in the process of launching will be revenue drivers for the company in the long-run and help us achieve profitability, an area we will dedicatedly focus on starting next year,” added Nigam.

PhonePe ‘Switch’ is a major part of the company’s strategy to become an Internet services aggregator, which people will use for online shopping to ordering food or cabs in place of separate applications for these use-cases. Currently, PhonePe charges a small fee for a merchant transaction using its payments platform.

Rituraj Rautela, head of Apps Platform, said ‘Switch’ allows app developers to run targeted offers and marketing, besides testing new features faster on PhonePe’s user base. “Switch is a new distribution platform for our partners, who may see lower cost of acquisition for new users through us,” said Rautela.

Allowing users, who are already logged-in onto the PhonePe, to use third-party services within its app and over the same user experience, is also an attempt to lock-in users to its ecosystem.

Explained: The rise of India's new billionaires and the fall of the old

A new breed of self-made entrepreneurs is vaulting into the ranks of the wealthy, offsetting billions lost by debt-burdened industrialists and members of the country's old dynasties.

India is going through one of the greatest periods of wealth creation -- and destruction -- all at the same time.

A new breed of self-made entrepreneurs is vaulting into the ranks of the wealthy, offsetting billions lost by debt-burdened industrialists and members of the country’s old dynasties. The changes are set to help India’s ultra-rich population grow at the world’s fastest pace.

It’s a shift shaped partly by a debt-fueled expansion that left businesses from power generation to airlines with $190 billion in soured loans.

Over the past few years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has cracked down on delinquent borrowers, and India’s banks moved to seize their assets, a dramatic change for a country where the wealthy once enjoyed almost complete protection.

While old business clans continue to dominate India’s rich lists, a tenfold expansion in its economy since its opening in the 1990s has spawned new tycoons in fields like technology.

The number of billionaires in India more than doubled to 119 between 2013 and 2018, according to Knight Frank. And the country will lead the global growth in ultrahigh net worth individuals, with its numbers rising 39 percent to 2,697 by 2023, the researcher estimates.

"The business environment has improved over the years," said Charles Dhanaraj, a professor at the Fox School of Business at Temple University in Philadelphia.

"The availability of venture capital and private equity has changed the opportunity space for promising businesses. So we should see more of these startups and scaleups in the coming years."

Business Standard

Hitching a ride: Hyundai may invest $250-300 million for 4% stake in Ola

The deal, if it goes through, would be part of Ola's ongoing fund-raising round where it is looking to raise $400-500 million at a $6-billion valuation.

In what could be one of the first major investments by an auto company in a ride-hailing firm, Korean auto giant Hyundai is reportedly in talks with Ola to pick up a four per cent stake in the firm for $250-300 million.

The deal, if it goes through, would be part of Ola's ongoing fund-raising round where the Bengaluru-based company is looking to raise $400-500 million at a $6-billion valuation. The deal would also help Hyundai increase its fleet of vehicles operating in the country.

ALSO READ: Ola's electric mobility unit gets Tiger, Matrix financial backing

The auto firm had in November invested $250 million in Singaporean ride-hailing company Grab. It appears that Hyundai along with other auto firms such as Mahindra and Mahindra, Ford and Toyota is betting on ride-hailing firms such as Ola, Uber and Lyft to increase sales.

According to data released by SIAM on Friday, domestic passenger vehicle sales declined 1.11 per cent to 272,284 units in February from 275,346 units in the same month the previous year.

Ola's previous tie-ups

In January, Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal also invested Rs 150 crore in Ola as part of the first tranche of the total Rs 650 crore-investment.

The ongoing Series J funding round is primarily subscribed by London-based investor Steadview Capital. Prior to Bansal's investment, Steadview Capital had invested Rs 520 crore in Ola.

Business Standard

Flipkart's PhonePe ties up with Ola, bets on micro-apps for growth

Through the AutoPay feature, users can link their credit or debit card for an Ola ride in the PhonePe app once, and the ride-fare would automatically be paid at the end of every ride.

Flipkart-owned digital payments firm PhonePe has tied up with homegrown cab aggregator Ola, where users can book a cab or an auto using a micro-app built on its payments platform.

The company has gone live with three such micro-apps, including that of redBus and Metro services, and plans to go live with 5 to 10 more in the ongoing quarter.

“Ola’s scale and reach, topped with our AutoPay feature will enable greater convenience and control to our users while making payments seamless,” said Rahul Chari, co-founder and chief technology officer, PhonePe.

The company, which has built its payments platform primarily on top of the National Payments Corp of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI), crossed the 100-million user milestone last month.

Through the AutoPay feature, users can link their credit or debit card for an Ola ride in the PhonePe app once, and the ride-fare would automatically be paid at the end of every ride.

The company has already integrated mobile wallets such as FreeCharge and Jio Money on its platform to give more options to users.