Introduction to the Company

UpGrad Product Management Competitor Analysis

Student Name: Anjani Kumar Singrodia

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Your SubmissionTo do a comprehensive competitive study of the cab market and understand the underlying mechanics of the industry for Meru Cabs, we need to first identify who Meru Cabs are competing against and this should include direct competitors as well as players in the market who may be indirectly influencing the audience that Meru is fighting for. Couple of major direct competitors of Meru Cabs are Ola Cabs and Uber. However the last 10 years has seen tremendous growth in creating more eco-friendly transit options in all tiers of Indian cities including Buses as well as Metro railways. However for the purpose of this analysis I have chosen to compare Meru Cabs against Ola Cabs.

1. Compare the company backgrounds of Ola Cabs and Meru Cabs.2. Compare the business models of Ola Cabs and Meru Cabs.3. Compare the strengths and weaknesses of Ola Cabs and Meru Cabs.4. Compare the product details and performances of Ola Cabs and Meru Cabs.5. Based on the above study, Predict the future initiatives of Ola Cabs so as to take necessary steps and mitigate giving up competitive

advantage.

Note: The sources for the above comparison for each slide is written in their notes section.

Company backgroundOla Cabs Meru Cabs

Goals“To bring convenience, price transparency and standardization to consumer booking car rentals and cab services” – Bhavish Aggarwal[1]

Meru’s goal is to provide world class taxi service to every demographic that they cater to and be a hallmark for reliable, high quality service in the industry.

MissionOla’s mission is to bring all the car operators and taxis on to a single platform and at the same time empower their driver partners to grow professionally, economically as well as personally.

Meru derives its name from Mount Meru which, according to Hindu mythology, can withstand any amount of turbulence and hence is known for unshakable reliability. It is this reliability with which they want to serve the customers in the most efficient way for the perfect experience.

StrategyOla’s strategy is to focus on the backend interface and ensure a high standard of quality and predictability with respect to consumer experience.

Meru’s strategy is to control the experience provided to the user so they started by purchasing cars and then franchised the cars to drivers, who in turn had to go through professional training before they went on the road.

Current EmployeesLinkedIn page of Ola suggests that the company employs between 5000 – 10000 people. Apart from the operations team in locations Ola is present, the company is headquartered in Bangalore, India. Apart from full time employees, Ola partners with over 4,50,000 drivers all over India.

The leadership team of Meru cabs comprises of individuals with over 15 years of experience each in their respective fields. Meru Cabs is headquartered in Mumbai and has more than 500 employees. Meru Cabs has a fleet size of 20000+.

FundingOla Cabs has raised over $1.2 billion in 8 rounds of funding from leading venture firms like Tiger Global, Softbank Group, DST Global and others. Their latest round was of $500 million from Didi Chuxing, Uber’s major competitor in China.

Meru Cabs was started with an equity stake to India Value Fund(IVF), a private equity fund. Meru Cabs has been a sustainable business since the beginning, recently though the company has raised $75 million in 2 rounds to increase brand salience and brand awareness from Brand Capital and IVF.

Revenue detailsFrom the 2014-15 data available, Ola generated about INR 420 Crores. However that amount was also accompanied by INR 750 Crores loss indicating the high cost of user acquisition and driver retention for the company.

Meru Cabs is one of the only cab company to nearly break-even with a total revenue of about INR 600 Crores. Meru Cabs also recently integrated its service with Google Now and Facebook Messenger Bot which game them a decent burst in bookings.

Founder’s profileAnkit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal are graduate from IIT Bombay 2009 and 2008 batch respectively. Ankit worked at startups QED42, Makesense and Wilcom after completing his dual degree in Mechanical Engg. whereas Bhavish worked at Microsoft for 2 years after his B.Tech in CSE before starting up with Ola Cabs.

Neeraj Gupta, founder and Managing Director of Meru Cabs partnered with IVF to create Meru Cabs and has led the company since 2007. Prior to this, he setup Mumbai’s largest fleet service business.

Business ModelsOla Cabs Meru Cabs

PresenceOla Cabs in the span of 6 years has become India’s largest cab service provider in terms of presence as it has now spread its wings to 75 Indian cities, almost covering all of Tier 2 cities.

Meru Cabs’ strategy seems to be to strengthen its service, technology and product first and then look to expand. They are now present in 24 cities in India and their next step is to increase their presence.

Target marketTarget market for both Ola cabs and Meru cabs is the same. The whole idea of private-car-turned-cab service was to counter the increased monopoly of taxis making life miserable for consumers by overcharging them/declining to go somewhere. People want to book a cab instantly, they don’t want the hassle of arguing over fare with the drivers and go anywhere they want to with the cab. This is the target market for both Ola and Meru cabs.

Revenue Model

With the growth in its product, Ola has been able to create multiple avenues of revenue generation for itself. First, percentage commission from the trips completed by a partner-driver. This may range from 15%-30% depending on car type or city. Secondly, by corporate tie-ups or event tie-ups, Ola offers heavy discounts to passengers from a company or an event. This is often offset by the volume of bookings done through them. Thirdly Ola started its own virtual wallet called Ola money and charges merchants based on transaction discounting rate. Ola started its own car leasing service to provide drivers who don’t own one.

From their driver partners Meru has 2 models: 1. Meru leases the car to the driver and driver pays a fixed amount to Meru per day. 2. Driver owns the car and Meru takes a commission of 15-25% of the daily fare. In both the cases Meru promises to provide at least a fixed number of rides per day. Also Meru owns about 50% of its fleet and a lot of their cars ply to the city Airport. This gives them plenty of visibility and sets the cars up as an advertising platform.

Past shifts in business model

Ola cabs started out in 2010 as a fleet rental service and owned a bunch of cars as did others in the competition at the time. However it soon realized that to grow exponentially it has to give up on owning the fleet and assume more of an aggregator role, like its international rival Uber.

When Meru started they owned all of their fleet and only had model 1 going for them. However a driver strike in 2012 made them more open to the idea of a revenue share model and hence they started model 2.

Strengths and WeaknessesOla Cabs Meru Cabs

Strengths• Purely a cab aggregator position, so easier to expand.• Being #1 cab provider in India, Ola has been able to secure multiple rounds of

VC funding thus offsetting the loss it is making.• More segmentation of cab services for example Ola Prime for sophisticated

rides with free wifi, Lux for luxury rides, XL for renting SUVs.

• Meru training academy prepares the drivers for giving consistently good experience to the customers.

• Revenue model is sustainable so customer acquisition and growth is organic.• Until recently Meru Cabs used to operate from the city airports giving them a

very important connection with the authorities.

Weaknesses• Customer service falters a lot of time because of lack of training for the

drivers.• Highly inorganic user growth leads to high marketing spend and thus business

making huge loss.• Due to a lack of clear state regulations, Ola often has to change aspects about

their product in a short time.

• Owning a chunk of their fleet increases the investment required for moving into a new city.

• Meru is a 9 year old company with only 2 rounds of VC funding. This largely limits its ability to compete against its competitors Ola, Uber with deep pockets.

Pain points

• Drivers misbehaving in terms of navigation, denial, and app abuse etc affecting the brand image of Ola.

• Charging the user multiple times • Drivers often complaint of payment delays.• Baseless surge pricing on rides.• Lack of proper training for drivers on app use.

• Bugs in app/ app crashing.• Poor customer service.• Driver refusal to service.• One of the major pain points is that Meru notifies the customer about

unavailability of cabs, in terms of advance booking, very late.

Product details and performancesOla Cabs Meru Cabs

Product DetailsOla has classified the different cabs available on their platform into Micro, Mini, Prime, Lux, Auto and Shuttle. They have also introduced shared rides in select cities as well as hourly rentals and outstation bookings.

Meru Cabs fleet is very standardized. They have two categories; regular and Genie (for hatchback). They also have intercity booking option. They have also introduced a new feature of roadside pickup where-in you first physically pickup your ride and then get the app to connect each other using cabID.

# of downloadsiOS - Data not availableAndroid – 10M – 50MWindows - Data not available

iOS - Data not availableAndroid – 1M – 5M Windows - Data not availableBlackberry - Data not available

App RatingsiOS – Rated 3.5 with 5680 reviewsAndroid – Rated 4.0 with over 513,420 reviewsWindows – Rated 3.4 with over 7227 reviews

iOS – Rated 3.5 with 1118 reviewsAndroid – Rated 3.8 with over 50,111 reviewsWindows – Rated 3.8 with 322 reviewsBlackberry – Rated 2.9 with 493 reviews

User Experience

Ola was one of the first cab service provider to launch smart phone app. It certainly has done its analysis about the UI and UX given the amount of people using the app. The UI is very intuitive and doesn’t jump around a whole lot while making a booking.

Meru Cabs was the latest in launching an app for the exponentially growing smart phone population in India and hence they opted to go for a cross platform app instead of native apps for each OS. This restricted the native design and experience for the users. UI as well is not too great as the user has to go though multiple clicks before he/she can book a cab which is the primary functionality of the app.

Overall functionality

Great design. Ola Cabs has always been looking at its competitor, not just nationally but also internationally. Ola took some of its design patterns from Uber and modified it to serve its own needs.

From a design standpoint the app raises a lot of questions about the placement of its UI elements. Functionality wise the app works well. However there are a few terms in apps which remains unexplained to the user in terms of category definition, fare type etc.

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Future initiatives and steps to mitigateFrom the above comprehensive study of Ola Cabs, it is clear to say that Ola Cabs’ strategy is to capture new market share, so it is looking to expand to all of Tier 2 and possibly Tier 3 cities. As well as they are trying to increase their product offering by serving every possible niche category where a group of people might want to rent a cab such as Sedans, SUVs, Luxury, Hourly rental, Outstation etc. We might see a couple more categories coming up before Ola exhausts its offering. Ola may also in future go the Uber way and offer a product for business logistics needs like food delivery, grocery delivery etc. although they did not succeed in the logistics domain on its own, a B2B offering would help reduce the downtime for its driver partners.

So it is up to Meru Cabs to decide if it is comfortable in its niche and stay its own course or if they want to compete with the deep pockets of Ola Cabs and Uber and make it a bloody fight.