Ola launches offline booking on its app

India’s mobile app for transportation, Ola has announced the launch of ‘Ola Offline’ across key metros in India. As the name suggests, the feature will enable customers to book a cab even without Internet on their smartphones.

Ola has been piloting the feature in smaller towns and cities since June 2016. Learnings from these markets, need for access to mobility even in the absence of Internet connectivity and constraints in the current data and connectivity infrastructure, has paved way to the launch of this innovative feature for India. Starting with four metro cities, Ola plans to roll out the feature in rest of the cities, over the coming weeks.

“Mobility is a critical cog in the wheels of a developing nation and citizens should have access to convenient and affordable solutions at all times. Although over 46 crore people in the country today have access to internet, it still only accounts for 34% of the population,” the company said in a statement.

The ‘Offline’ feature was piloted in several smaller markets like Indore and Nagpur, and saw significant acceptance among the consumers in these cities over the past few weeks. Following its success in these markets, the feature will be rolled across all the 102 cities that Ola operates in.

‘Ola Offline’, like other innovative features viz. ‘Ola WiFi’, ‘2G optimization’ and ‘Regional language support’ have been built on very local insights. A diverse country like India faces multiple challenges when it comes to offering a seamless mobility experience, and Ola with its wide variety of offerings including auto-rickshaws, e-rickshaws, Kali-Peelis, is successfully offering consistent and affordable mobility solutions across the 102 cities it operates in.