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Ola expands into corporate biz ahead of Uber in country

Under Ola Corporate, organisations will be required to pay advance deductible when employees use services

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BS Reporter Bengaluru
Taking a leaf from its rival taxi aggregator Uber's service that allows employees to directly link their official trips and bills to a prepaid corporate account, Ola on Monday launched Ola Corporate across the 102 cities the company has a presence in India.

Uber for Business, the like service, is available in select countries globally but hasn't been introduced in India yet. In the Ola Corporate model, organisations have to pay an advance, deducted when any of their employees use the services across the country. E-mail bills would be sent to the company.

This offers the flexibility of hailing an Ola as required for business and paying from their company’s centralised pre-paid account, the firm said. The fares in these rides would be the same as normal ones.
 

Ola says this takes away the problems in scheduling of pick-ups and cumbersome billing and payment. The solution will also enable companies to customise ride policies for different groups of employees, giving full control of the process to the administration teams.

“We are simplifying the way executives travel for business, at the click of a button on their Ola app,” said Pranay Jivrajka, chief operating officer.

Once an executive has been verified by his/her employer for Ola Corporate, the new toggle option of ‘Corporate Ride’ appears on the confirmation screen at the time of booking. On enabling this, the ride gets billed directly to the user’s corporate account, without the user having to pay the fare in cash or through Ola Money. Other in-app features of Ola will be available for Ola Corporate riders as well.

“It is one of our fastest growing product and over 50,000 companies have signed up including several in India. We are seeing extensive interest among corporates in India with many already using the product in several cities across India." Ruchica Tomar, Uber spokesperson, said in an e-mail interaction.

Its clients in India include NDTV, Max Healthcare and Oyo Rooms.

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First Published: Jan 12 2016 | 12:47 AM IST

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