Ola announces location, mapping innovations to improve customer experience

Mapping is at the core of Ola's growing technology focus. Local nuances including one-ways, short-cuts and unmapped terrains make for a challenging ground reality. Add to that diversity in culture, languages and demographics making us a very unique place.

Ola understands that technology innovation around mapping and geo-location will solve for some of the most local problems that customers face today. Two ways in which Ola is ensuring a world class product experience for customers and driver-partners alike, include, working with ecosystem partners who share the same ideals and investing in its own technology.

In addition to the deep integration with Apple's latest iOS 10 release in India, across iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, Ola has launched three new rich features on its app to build an incredible experience for customers and driver-partners.

Ola Hotspots - Ola is identifying popular 'HotSpots' i.e. high demand areas such as tech parks, housing colonies, malls, and public spaces etc. which have multiple entry and exit points.

Commuters waste a lot of time in locating drivers while booking their ride from such public spaces.

This feature is a game-changer in such a scenario, as the Ola app will now proactively suggest 'Hotpots' closest to customer's location and send it to the driver in the form of text, vis-a-vis a geographical location, which might not always be 100 percent accurate. This would mean, your Ola app can intelligently get your cab ride to a particular exit of your favourite mall, without having you to explain a word to your driver! This would ensure seamless experience for customers and reduce hassle for drivers.

Snap to historic pick-up - This feature uses a customer's past rides as a reference point when triangulating the user's historic pick up point vis-a-vis booking point. Years of operations has helped Ola collect valuable data about a user's booking and boarding patterns, allowing the app to automatically suggest the current pickup location when maps can be inaccurate.

Customers always have the choice to over-ride the suggested pickup location.

Share Directions - As soon as a customer books a ride, they will now get an option to 'Share Direction' with their drivers. While Ola's GPS and Navigation guides drivers to their pick up location, it may be a challenge to navigate through the many lanes and by-lanes of the Indian cities. This feature allows user to feed in the landmark closest to their pick up location that will be communicated to the driver instantly.

This feature can also be used to give specific instructions to drivers-like knowing which apartment to ask for at the entrance of a gated society.

Ola is also one of the first Indian mobility applications to bring about its integration with Apple's iOS10. With this partnership, iPhone and iPad users can book an Ola cab using Siri, as well as through an independent app on the Apple Watch. That means, the next time users want to book a cab, all that they need to do is say "Hey Siri, get me an Ola cab?" Or just tap on their watch to book the closest Ola.