Ola gears up to overtake Uber by announcing plans to cover 200 Indian cities in 2015

Web-based taxi service Ola, which currently operates in nearly 50 Indian cities, has reportedly announced its plan to expand to 200 cities in India by the end of this year.

The announcement followed SoftBank's 210 million dollar investment in the startup last year that pushed its value to 1 billion dollars. Ola was present in 19 cities in October when the deal took place and it has now expanded to 40 new locations including, tier-two and three cities, in the past five months, reported TechCrunch.

Anand Subramanian, Ola's head of communications said that the company initially planned to expand its presence to 100 cities by 2016 but since, that looked "very achievable" now so, it has decided to rewrite its targets.

The move is aimed at posing a tough competition to Uber, which operates in just 250 cities worldwide.

Although Banglore remains Ola's largest city based on customer demand, its expansion to more rural parts of the country indicates that it is pitching itself as the first pan-India taxi-on-demand service.