CHENNAI: A taxi operator delivering your food too? Well, that’s exactly what Ola is doing with its food delivery service Ola Café in four cities currently. Chennai might just be on the list when it goes from beta to a full launch soon.
While Ola’s Head of Marketing Communications Anand Subramanian refused to comment on what cities, and whether Chennai, would be next on the list, he said on the sidelines of the Global Mobile App Summit and Awards held in Chennai recently that the beta version was doing quite well in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
“Once the beta is over, the service will be launched in other major cities very soon,” he said. Ola Café is Ola’s move to diversify into other verticals that can make use of its current competencies — a ready fleet of taxis and technological expertise. According to Subramanian, the beta that is currently being run in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad is doing well enough to boost confidence.
Ola Café, when it comes to Chennai, will be embedded in the Ola app itself and will boast a small menu from local restaurants which the customer can order. The food will be delivered by a cab in 15 - 20 minutes at the location from which the customer has ordered. The Ola Café section of the app will display the food carrying cabs within reach of the customers location.
The food available on the menu will depend on a few popular items from restaurants in the area, tied up with Ola, that the cab is regularly topped off with. As for the cabbies who will ferry the food, Ola has started out in the four cities with a dedicated fleet for Ola Café alone, though that system might change in the future.
The service, if it works out as well in Chennai as it is in other cities, will provide customers with a much faster option for food deliveries, especially considering that the delivery is promised within 15-20 minutes of the order being placed.
The system adopted by Ola also significantly cuts the time required for a delivery, since it only provides a limited menu — one that comes prepackaged and already in the cab when the order is being placed. It is a model that other popular delivery services like DineIn and Food Panda cannot match.