It’s war between ‘foreign’ Uber and ‘local’ Ola in India

Mumbai: The fight between taxi aggregators Ola and Uber has moved to whole other level. Ola’s first employee Pranay Jivrajka, who is also the chief operating officer of the company, in a blog on Thursday wrote about how compliant Ola has been with Indian laws and regulations, at huge cost to the company, and questioned ‘the’ competitor compliance record.

Jivrajka’s blog is, in fact, a counter to one by Bhavik Rathod, Uber’s general manager of South and West India, posted on Tuesday.

Rathod said Uber may be a San Francisco-based company but it is solving real Indian problems and respects the laws of the country. He took a dig at “our competitors” who received most of their funding from “foreign investors”.

Jivrajka countered this with “no matter how much money Alibaba may have raised from international investors, it’s run by a Chinese founder and is creating immense value for China”.

The Ola COO added that ‘their competitor’(no names is something both companies have adhered to) is a serial violator of the laws in India. He has even listed out a few—the competitor’s bike taxis in Gurgaon with white number plates despite receiving multiple notices and seizures of vehicles by the authorities, its non-compliance with high court orders on the diesel ban in Delhi, being a few.

As the two companies slug it out, Meru Cab Co. Pvt. Ltd found itself in a sweet spot on Wednesday. It raised 150 crore ($25 million) from Brand Capital, the investment arm of Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd (BCCL), which publishes The Times of India and The Economic Times newspapers.