Mahindra, a popular name in the utility vehicle segment in the country has announced a strategic tie-up with Ola, a popular cab aggregator in the country. In next two years, the company intends on increasing the Ola fleet strength by 40,000 cars. Last year, Nissan Motors had announced its tie up with Ola for buying and lending of cars to its drivers. Recently, Tata Motors also announced its association with Uber.
Anand Mahindra, chairman, Mahindra Group has also clarified that this collaboration is not limited to Mahindra Auto and it expands to the entire group’s services. This means that Ola drivers are also eligible to receive up to 100 per cent financing on the new and pre-owned vehicles. Moreover, the company’s insurance division will offer schemes at a lower premiums for their convenience.
Mahindra will also cover Ola drivers under the CSR scheme where they will be entitled to receive insurance of about Rs 15 lakh and receive discount on spares. Moreover, their children are also entitled to receive certain scholarship benefits. The Indian automaker has not entered into an exclusive collaboration with Ola, thereby they are keeping the collaboration option open with other taxi aggregators. However, the financial incentives are exclusive to Ola this time around.
The fleet addition will begin with the regular Verito sedan, while at a later date Mahindra might also introduce its electric vehicles to the fleet. Mahindra has also noted the importance of connecting with the digital ride-sharing platform as recently Reliance has introduced the Jio smartphones which offer low cost internet benefit to users thereby seeing a potential to see more users on this online ride-sharing fleet aggregator.
