After cabs, Ola will now pick up food from your favourite restaurants, and deliver it at your doorstep. The online taxi-hailing platform will launch Ola Café in Chennai “very soon.”
The company that launched the food delivery services as a pilot in select pockets of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, will gradually roll it out in other major cities in a phased manner, said Anand Subramanian, Director, Ola.
“Our Café is doing pretty well and catching on very fast, giving us enough confidence to expand to a few other big cities.”
Taking a cue from Uber’s food delivery services in the US, the home-grown taxi aggregator Ola launched its Café services early this year with dedicated vehicles, enabling food delivery to consumers in 15-20 minutes.
Ola has tied up with some popular restaurants in these pockets, to supply their ‘top selling’ food items to Ola in anticipation of orders from consumers.
Once the order is placed by consumers, Ola will deliver at the consumers’ doorstep in 15-20 minutes, sometimes at a “discounted price, as we place bulk orders to these restaurants,” Subramanian said.
Users have to install a new Ola app with a ‘cafe,’ and can select from the choice of meal offered on the app and place the order.
Though it started with a small fleet of dedicated vehicles, the idea is to optimise the use of attached cabs that ferry its customers. “But, we can press them into the service gradually after trying it out in these pockets,” he said.