Ride-share company Ola is hoping to grow its topline through further expanding its international operations. To this end, the company has been making additional investments in its overseas operations to the extent of $60 million in the last 15 months. This information has been sourced through the office of the designated authority, Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority, Singapore. Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, the US and the UK are the countries where Ola has launched its operations.
Ola has many of its corporate functions, including the call centres, located in India and they oversee the international operations as well. It is being reported that Ola may find its international operations making increased contributions to its topline. Some sources say this could be as much as a third of its revenues.
The interesting factor is the cost of promoting and running the international operations is much lower than what they have to spend in India and the returns are higher. The basic reasons could be the price dynamics in these developed markets. From that perspective, it makes sense that Ola is making more investments in the international markets. Ola has floated a venture, Ola Singapore Pte, to manage the international business. Even the volume of business generated from key cities like Sydney, Perth and Auckland match what Ola gets from cities like Mumbai or Bengaluru.
With the Indian operations too, the company is taking steps to cut down on the incentives being paid to drivers and broad-based offerings like value-added services. Apart from the core ride-share business, there are the food delivery (Food Panda) and financial services as well.
Ola is taking on Uber in India and in some of the other markets, it has entered internationally. Uber is a much larger entity with presence in 400 cities across 60 countries.