Ola Cabs rebranded to Ola Consumer, CEO Aggarwal launches loyalty program

Bhavish Aggarwal also announced the relaunch of Ola Share - the ride sharing service, which will start today in Bangalore and soon expand to other cities

Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO of popular ride-hailing company Ola Cabs, announced today that the company will be rebranded as Ola Consumer. Aggarwal made the announcement during Ola Sankalp - the annual special event dedicated to sharing the company’s roadmap held in Bangalore and live streamed on social media platforms.

“We are changing our name from Ola Cabs to Ola Consumer,” Aggarwal explained. “...Cabs is one of the services this company offers…we are going to offer a broader range of services….,” he said, noting that the ultimate objective of the company is to leverage technology to make commerce more accessible to Indian consumers.

At the event, he also announced the relaunch of Ola Share - the ride-sharing service, which will start today in Bangalore and soon expand to other cities. “…I have heard so many love stories which have started in an Ola Share, so many people met their future husband or wife in an Ola Share. I do hope to rekindle those romances as we scale up…,” he said.

Aggarwal also announced the launch of Ola Coin – a loyalty program being offered by the company for customers across all its services. “You’ll be able to earn with every transaction, you will be able to redeem with every transaction, you will have personalised loyalty benefits…,” Aggarwal said.

The loyalty program feature is also live from today in Bangalore and will be available in other cities in near future, he added.

During his presentation, Aggarwal explained six reasons why commerce in India is lagging: high cost of middle men, high logistics cost, poor and costly discovery (of services for the consumers; takes a lot of research), expensive and inaccessible credit, inefficient warehousing and legacy manufacturing (we don’t have the supply chains of modern products in India), he said.

Aggarwal further assured that this was going to change now as Ola Consumer is making big efforts in this direction with multiple initiatives.