Ola, India’s leading cab aggregator app company has announced the public release of their API – this will allow major mobile applications as well as individual developers, to integrate Ola’s offering onto their platforms. According to PR sent to us, leading brands like Samsung, MakeMyTrip, InMobi, and Helpchat have already integrated Ola’s APIs in their apps.
Opening up of Ola’s API means that now other applications besides Ola’s own app can show ride availability, estimation, booking and tracking. Going forward, users will have multiple apps from where they can book and take Ola cab rides. With this Ola targets an overall reach to a user base of over a 100 million from its API partners over the next 2 years.
In regards to the launch, Ankit Bhati, CTO and Co-founder at Ola said, “The public release of our API to developers is a giant leap in collaborative technology. Our technology has helped in enabling mobility for millions of users, across use cases in over a 100 cities. With this step, we would open up access to many more millions of users from our partners, offering them a seamless mobility experience. We are excited about welcoming thousands of developers across the country to work with us to build mobility for a billion people.”
Ola has said that their APIs also extend to integrations of Ola Money and other new categories that they have launched recently. Ola has expanded rapidly in last few months and now offer Ola Café, on-demand Grocery, Food Delivery, Ola Shuttle and Ola Bus.
Ola Hackathon
To push Ola API usage, Ola had arranged an hackathon with a vision that App developers across India could come up with innovative products with use Ola’s API to solve a real pain point for users. Ola had arranged for cash prizes of over Rs. 400,00 and AWS credits worth USD 2000 for the winners of hackathon!
Our take
Opening of Ola API’s will undoubtedly push usage of Ola service across categories. For example, a Train ticket booking or a hotel room booking app can now also have Ola cab bookings on its app with the use of APIs. From Ola’s perspective, users will now get multiple options and avenues from where they can book cab rides (and offer services from other categories).
Ola’s main competitor, Uber has been offering their API’s in US for a long time and they have been quite successful with it. Many apps have integrated Uber’s offerings in their app including Tripadvisor, Hyatt, Expensify and others.