Ola Uber or Adios Uber!

The taxi-ride market in India is just witnessing its tough competition between two giants. The Uber and the Ola had dominated the Indian market for taxis almost to saturation. Now the American Silicon Valley startup is battling for its ground with the home-turf startup Ola cabs. 

  

Uber had been running into many problems lately which included rape charges on its drivers, market shrink due to newer entrants and also price war with Ola cabs. But the well-funded startup was undeterred by these. But now the departure of personnel from the company has put the company in tough times. Jeff Jones is the latest to depart the ride-sharing business as president of marketing and public image. He will be followed later by the VP of maps and Uber application platform Brian McClendon.

Uber has raised more than $8billion in funding as compared to Ola cabs, which raised about a fourth of that. But Ola plans to counter this using improvement in its user experience. It has presence in over 100 cities across India compared to 29 of Uber. It employs its own map system which is inspired by the fact that various places in India don’t have a proper name to be put on the map. Also it offers its services in more than 20 languages across India. Ola is using its home-grown potential to its advantage. 

This will make it difficult for Uber to expand in it. The current strategy to maintain its footing and bear the attacks until a strong leader comes at its helm, who can understand the importance of local people and culture. The huge capital surplus can help in cushioning the blows. But Ola can go all-out offensive in this situation and gain new turfs.

 

Is Jio encouraging Internet consumption or addiction?

Time and again invaders and dictators have used their power to usurp the power of expression from people. They have taken away natural resources that have been the fundamental right of a person. A person has to pay for them. In this age of technological revolution, Reliance has come up with a new policy to enslave the Internet surge. Jio was the brainchild of Mukesh Ambani who calculated the potential of the rising number of users of Internet in India. He thinks that by being the first person to launch Jio 4G technologies in India he can make Indians addicted to the Jio experience. The initial bounty of free offers and unlimited bandwidth attracted the maximum number of unique customers to Jio. Then after the bounty period is over the people will have been quite used to the brand of Jio. This will make them pay for the usage and thus increase the usage. 

 

Internet speed and Internet consumption are just two sides of a coin. As one increases the other one also increases. People who are just concerned about the service will never understand this relation. But slowly the average consumption of a person will increase three to four times more than his current consumption. This will make them spend more on the Internet usage per day as compared to the current expenditure.

To understand this, consider a person who smokes one cigar a day at the price of a cigarette for 3 months. After the bounty period the seller can charge him the actual value of the cigar and the person will spend it. He will never think about smoking a cigarette again because he’s used to the cigar. In fact in some cases the person under consideration can also increase his consumption.

In this age of Internet proliferation even the United Nations has declared the Internet as a fundamental right of the people. Nations like Estonia and Lithuania are known for their free Public Wifi Internet. Why is then India the world’s largest democracy in the world paying for its Internet consumption? Possibly it is because the people never think of it. They never realize that Internet has now become like air and water. Will you pay everyday for breathing oxygen? But this can only be understood by the future technologies that are coming up. Like the Internet of Things, which will change the way data is used. But these are later things. Primary is to realize that it is time that Internet becomes free like an open source platform which is only under one surveillance and that is the government and not any corporates.

Cigar or cigarettes either are going to burn; or can people get away with these? But in the end the choice should be that of the people.