Ola slashes fares on shared rides by nearly half

Fares down to just Rs 3 a km; firm expands the service to three more cities

India's largest taxi aggregator Ola has slashed rates of its ridesharing offering by nearly half while also expanding the service into three more cities -- Chandigarh, Jaipur and Ahmedabad -- taking the total number of cities where the service is present to ten.

Ola says it has optimised its Share offering, which matches riders heading in the same direction, enough to drop the fare to just Rs 3 per kilometer. This makes Share the cheapest cab offering from Ola yet, undercutting the price of its Micro category by up to 50 per cent.

"With immense demand for Ola Share and improved matching rate, we have been able to bring down fares to as low as Rs. 3/km, making Ola Share more pocket-friendly than ever," said Raghuvesh Sarup, Head of Categories at Ola, in a statement.

Ola says its ridesharing offering has been gaining significant traction in the 8-10 months since it launched the service, with more users flocking to the service given its extremely low rates. The company's biggest rival Uber too has a similar service called Uber Pool, which sees the highest utilisation among all its categories.

In a recent interview with Business Standard, Ola COO Pranay Jivrajka said that Ola has stopped subsidising fares for customers across all categories. Instead, the firm is looking at higher utilisation (claiming double than its closest competitor) to drive down costs of rides on its platform.