Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has stated that the corporate sees home participant Rapido as a stronger rival than Ola in India’s ride-hailing market.
“Ola was our important competitors, now the harder competitors in India is Rapido,” Khosrowshahi stated in a teaser of his full interview on Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath’s podcast Folks by WTF.
His remarks trace at a shift within the nation’s aggressive $13-billion ride-hailing market as soon as dominated by Ola. It comes simply days after the Central Shopper Safety Authority (CCPA), the nation’s prime shopper watchdog, slapped a penalty of Rs 10 lakh on Rapido for alleged deceptive and unfair commerce practices.
Rapido was based in 2015 as a motorcycle taxi aggregator. The Bengaluru-based startup has since diversified into auto-rickshaw and cab providers. It not too long ago began testing a beta model of a meals supply app known as Ownly in Bengaluru, as per experiences.
The platform’s ride-hailing providers can be found in over 100 cities throughout India. Rapido has seemed to lift contemporary funding and lift funds by focusing on tier two and tier three cities the place there may be robust demand for inexpensive mobility providers. Its give attention to two-wheeler and three-wheeler mobility has additionally helped Rapido grow to be standard amongst price-conscious customers as India returned to normalcy post-pandemic, analysts estimate.
Nevertheless, its fast development has additionally led to regulatory scrutiny.
The CCPA, headed by Chief Commissioner Nidhi Khare, had taken suo motu cognisance of Rapido’s two advert campaigns — ‘Assured Auto’ and ‘AUTO IN 5 MIN OR GET ₹ 50’, and located they had been “deceptive” and requested the ride-hailing service to discontinue them instantly.
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CCPA issued these instructions below varied sections of the Shopper Safety Act, 2019. “It could be famous that Rapido provides its providers in over 120 cities, and the impugned commercial ran for at the very least 548 days (roughly 1.5 years), being propagated in a number of regional languages throughout the nation. Due to this fact, the CCPA finds it essential to impose a penalty to safeguard the pursuits of customers,” the order learn.
Ola, then again, has shifted focus past mobility to EV manufacturing, battery manufacturing, geospatial expertise, and synthetic intelligence (AI). Consequently, its market share has shrunk with guardian firm Ola Shopper reporting a decline in income to Rs 1,906 crore in FY24 from Rs 2,135 crore in FY23.
Guardian firm ANI Applied sciences’ consolidated income additionally dropped barely to Rs 2,203 crore from Rs 2,277 crore. Nevertheless, the corporate additionally narrowed its consolidated web loss to Rs 328.5 crore from Rs 772.2 crore the earlier yr in FY24 on account of decrease worker profit bills.
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