With diesel vehicles set to be banned from being used as taxies from April 1, taxi aggregator Ola will invest Rs. 200 crore over the next six months to expand the fleet of CNG cars on its platform in Delhi-NCR.
Both Ola and its competitor Uber have been asked to completely switch over to CNG by March end. Ola, which already has more than 20,000 CNG cars on its platform in Delhi-NCR, will add 5,000 new CNG vehicles by next week.
Ola has partnered with dealers of car manufacturers including Maruti, Tata, Hyundai, Chevrolet and Nissan.
The move will help Ola to cash in further on the lucrative Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida routes which comprise a significant portion of the on-demand transportation market.
Drivers can save up to Rs 1.5 lakh on exchanging their old diesel vehicles for a new CNG one and over the next six months.
In the past few months, Ola has been aggressively expanding the number of driver partners and CNG cars in Delhi-NCR, following the crackdown on diesel taxis plying in the Capital after court orders.
In November last year, Ola had raised $500 million (around Rs 3,299 crore) in series F funding from Baillie Gifford, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group and others. Ola has raised over $1.3 billion (roughly Rs 8,600 crore) in external funding.
With over 3,50,000 vehicles registered on its platform, Ola offers services across 102 cities in India.
Source : BS Motoring