CHENNAI: With emphasis on women safety starting to play a significant role on how well taxi companies do in urban markets, a slew of safety features have been hitting the ground in the last few months, the most recent of which is Ola’s Pink cabs.
The concept of a taxi cab driven by women for women is not new. Just a few months ago, ‘PennTaxi’, also called as ‘Pink Taxi’ was launched in the city. But Ola has become the first of the big guns to roll out the product in the city.
The project is still in the beta phase, according Ola spokespersons, and the actual details of the service are not being revealed. But the most relevant details are these — the cabs will be driven only by women drivers and available only for women passengers. How effective Ola’s screening of passengers will be when they do not take gender details while signing up on the app is to be seen.
So far, the only indications of the service for most customers in the city has been the innocuous addition of one more option in the Ola app.
And for most, opting for the pink service has not resulted in the flurry of little icons on the map that accompanied the roll out of Ola’s auto services.
“The option has been available from Sunday for me,” said Jayashree Ramesh, a resident of Gopalapuram. “But I haven’t been able to find any cabs yet. It generally shows ‘no cabs’. But I can’t wait to check out the service,” she added.
The fare for Ola Pink, according to the companies android application, is on a par with the rates for their prime service — first five kilometres costing `200 and every additional kilometres from then on `18.
Ola Pink is only the latest in the line of women-friendly measures being taken by major cab companies following the Uber rape incident in Delhi.
Ola had rolled out its emergency SOS button on their application earlier this month. The cab company also allows one to opt for the track option, where the company constantly tracks the ride and sends periodic updates to the emergency contacts that the passenger had registered in the app.