Just after uberMOTO launch, Ola made their service live as OlaBike

Ola also made their service live as OlaBike

Ola and Uber, both moving ahead with a mission to make to taxi service more fast and reliable have launched bike taxi service in Bengaluru. Uber after testing this service in Bangkok brings it to India and finally launched it as uberMOTO. Just after the uber's launch Ola also made their service live as OlaBike, both providing the service at a very affordable and unexpected price. 

With the launch there emerges stiff competition between the two which can be clearly looked in terms of the prices. Both Ola and Uber are positioning their bike taxi services as their most affordable offering. Uber has set its base tariff to ferry passengers at Rs 15, while Ola will charge customers a minimum of Rs 30, while Ola will charge customers Rs 2 per km in addition to Rs 1 per minute. The launch of these bike taxi services comes shortly after Uber and Ola introduced carpooling as options on their platform. Ola has also launched Ola Shuttle, a shuttle bus service aimed at filling the gap in the inadequate public transport systems that many of India’s cities are plagued with.

Competition is so stiff that Ola came up with Olabike announcement only a few hours after Uber anoounced it's bike service UberMOTO

Bengaluru, home to a large number of technology companies, research institutions and start-ups, has the highest density of vehicles in the country — 5.6 million vehicles for a population of around 10 mn. Of this, two-wheelers constitute 3.84 mn or 69 per cent of the total vehicle population in the city. 

Numerous startups such as Baxi, Bikxie, Heybob, Rapido and M-taxi have already been operating small-scale, city-based bike taxis in Bengaluru and Gurgaon. However, the growth of two-wheeler services in India has been curtailed by the law, with bike taxis only being allowed in a few states like Goa and Haryana. If Ola and Uber find success in Bengaluru, bike taxis may find their way into other Indian cities soon. 

Uber’s decision to launch bike taxi’s in India comes a week after launching a similar service in Bangkok. The company had earlier experimented with offering autorickshaws on its platform in Delhi. However, it later withdrew the service. Homegrown rival Ola continues to offer autos as an option on its platform, charging customers Rs 10 above the regular metered fare, which auto drivers pay as a fee for being listed on its platform.

“With bike taxis, we are enabling safe pillion rides for our users with trained two-wheeler drivers at competitive fares. We expect significant demand in the pilot phase and we will continue to scale this service up in the coming weeks to cover more areas in the city and serve more users,”

• Pranay Jivrajka, chief operating officer at Ola.

It is clear from the launch that Ola's and Uber's concept of bike taxi is going to defintely change the way the people cruise the places by taxis or in coming future we may the also see these firm changing the look of whole taxi based service because in the race of competition there's always a destructive or constructive innovation.

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