Taxi aggregator Ola has joined hands with leading banks and oil and gas companies to help driver-partners fight cash crunch post demonetisation of old currency notes.
In Bengaluru, it has partnered with BPCL to facilitate the process of obtaining fuel e-vouchers across all BPCL petrol pumps in the city.
Thousands of driver partners have already availed this feature and have used these fuel e-vouchers issued by Ola to fill-up petrol/diesel in a cashless manner. The activity kick started this weekend and will continue till end of December; and will also be implemented in other key cities.
Apart from making fuel e-vouchers available for driver-partners, Ola has partnered with Axis Bank to put up mobile ATMs in its office to support driver-partners with accessible cash withdrawals. Stationed at Ola's office in Bengaluru, bank executives assisted Ola driver-partners in cash withdrawals through the mobile ATM machines.
Any driver-partner who had his 'Aadhar card' linked to his bank account, was able to withdraw cash using this service. In addition to this, Ola had also tied-up with ICICI bank to facilitate cash conversion for the driver-partners in the past weeks until exchange was permitted. Bank representatives put up kiosks in the Ola office and helped driver-partners in exchanging demonetized currency into accepted denominations.
"Ola's mission of building mobility for a billion Indians is driven by its driver-partners; and hence it is imperative for us to create an ecosystem that empowers them as entrepreneurs. Enabling easy cash availability has saved a lot of effort and time for our driver-partners without having to stand in long queues at banks or ATMs, allowing them to serve more citizens in this time," said vice president Operations at Ola, Karanveer Singh Shekhawat.
"Aligned with government's Digital India mission, Ola has been tirelessly working towards helping hundreds of thousands of driver partners across the country get access to digital financial benefits like - bank accounts, payment cards, online transfer of earnings on a daily basis, to name a few," added Shekhawat.
Ola also rolled out a number of similar initiatives for the general public across the country. In Kolkata, Ola has partnered with Punjab National Bank (PNB) to put up mobile ATMs in its cabs to support citizens by reducing the effort of going to a bank. Ola has also rolled out a similar activity for citizens in Hyderabad, in partnership with the State Bank of India and Andhra Bank. Similar initiatives will be flagged off in other key cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad in the coming weeks.