Ola's focus over the next one year will be to create an ecosystem to nurture micro-entrepreneurship among drivers in existing as well as new cities, besides increasing the number of the vehicles to 1,600, Ravi Teja, Business Head, Tamil Nadu, said in a release.
Ola currently has over 1,000 drivers-cum-owners and the company sees the number to grow to 1,600 in the next one year for which the company has tied with car manufacturers like Tata, Ford, Mahindra, Maruti and Nissan across cities to help drivers buy cars from them directly at discounts of up to Rs. 1,00,000, he said.
The company has also tied up with financial institutions to ensure that drivers were able to procure loans for buying their own cars easily. The business model allows drivers to increase their revenue by providing them more access to customers while reducing idle time.
Ola has seen a tremendous growth after its promising launch a year ago and from 200 cabs during the launch in November 2014, it has come a long way, adding 800 cabs on its platform, at present.
On safety initiatives, Ravi Teja said that the company has allocated $20 million (roughly Rs. 127 crores) for safety and security initiatives, which were taking forward for all their customers.
Apart from a host of security features like real-time GPS tracking, customer number masking continuous driver verification and training, Ola has recently introduced an SOS button in the app.
Users can set their emergency contact's name, contact number and email ID on the app. The set email and mobile number would require verification by the contact, after which this feature shall be activated.
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