NEW DELHI — Aiming to wrest control of India’s booming taxi market, two ride-hailing smartphone apps — Uber and Ola — are promising hundreds of millions in new investment while also facing off with one another in court.
[...] it’s the continuing legal wrangles between the two — with each accusing the other of behaving unethically — that have drawn attention to the struggle for India’s $9 billion taxi industry and future growth possibilities in a country with an urban population of 400 million people but few options in safe, convenient public transportation.
“It’s a tussle to capture the top spot among taxi-hailing apps and the title of No. 1,” said Jaspal Singh, founder of Valoriser Consultants, specializing in analysis of the transportation industry.
Smartphone ride apps, introduced in India in 2010, have grown to account for 10 percent of the country’s overall taxi industry, which also includes regular cabs and three-wheeler “rickshaws.”
[...] they are quickly adding cities and customers, including car drivers increasingly fed up with gridlock and difficulty finding parking on India’s crowded roads.
Uber, which entered the Indian market in 2013, operates in 29 cities and is eager to expand, while myriad small players are clawing their way in.
Specifically, those setbacks include a legal petition filed by Ola in October, accusing Uber of flouting a Supreme Court order demanding app-based taxis in New Delhi switch from running on diesel to using compressed natural gas.
Uber’s reputation temporarily took a hit, and the government briefly banned all smartphone app ride services while new regulations were drafted.
Last week, rickshaw booking app Jugnoo, operating in the north Indian city of Chandigarh, accused Ola of using “unethical practices to sabotage its business” by making fake bookings and warned of legal action if it did not cease.
Singh, the transportation analyst, said Uber and Ola are honing their strategies and boosting services to secure market dominance as the country experiments with transportation limits aimed at curbing air pollution.
