EXCLUSIVE: Ola share pass pre-sells 5 million share rides in 60 days

Ola Cabs today announced that its newly launched Share Pass has already pre-sold over 5 million Ola Share rides in less than 60 days.

The positive response to Share Pass is being credited to the convenience, predictability, and cost-savings that Ola offers.

Share Pass, a subscription product, allows customers to take Ola Share rides at a flat fixed price. Inspired to solve specific challenges in India, Ola has taken an innovative approach towards simplifying its Ola Share users’ commute, delivering affordability, predictability and ‘no peak pricing’ benefits to Ola Share users.

ALSO READ: EXCLUSIVE: Ola’s COO talks about all the aces the company has up its sleeves to take on competition from Uber in 2017

Available in three variants of 10, 20 and 40 rides; customers can hail an Ola Share and pay the same price for every ride. After running a successful launch in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai, Share Pass is now live in a total of 7 cities including Delhi-NCR, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Pune.

Millions of Indian commuters rely on public transport, including buses, local trains, and metros for their daily travel.

Business Insider talked to Raghuvesh Sarup, CMO and Head of Categories at Ola, who said, “At Ola, we believe that shared mobility has the potential to solve major transportation issues in India, including congestion and pollution. The Share pass will help Ola address the growing customer demand for Share rides.” He further added, “Share Pass is a major step ahead for shared mobility in India, and we predict this category will be as large as the industry is today even bigger than Ola, in the next 18 months.”


5 Million kgs of CO2 saved

Over the last 8-10 months, Ola Share been able to save upwards of 5 million kilograms of carbon emissions along with over 2 million liters of fuel as more and more people shared cabs. A recent Ola campaign called #DoYourShare; accounted for savings of over 1200 tons of carbon emissions in just three metros - Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.

How does the Ola Share Pass work?

You can find ‘Share Pass’ under the menu options of your Ola app. Depending on your usage, you can choose from 3 variants of the Pass - 10, 20 or 40 rides. You can pay for the Share Pass using Ola Money/ Net banking / Debit or credit cards. Once purchased, a flat fare will automatically apply every time

Expansion plans

Raghuvesh thinks that in the future Ola will also enable options like – Gifting of share pass.In terms of expanding this category, Mr. Sarup thinks that it will be the future for how India commutes,’’In the coming months our focus will be to expand on this category by customizing it to big corporates under Ola Corporate category. This category also helps during this era of demonetization where cash-crunch is affecting the best of us.

Cases where the employer pays for the employees for to and fro office or even where there is a Ride approval for a particular ride, will be integrated into the app through technology’’ says Sarup. Daily commuters and students are the most popular category under the Share pass and the crossing of features makes sense for the company as it results in consistent rides and also regular cash flow.