SoftBank's investment in Altaeros is tiny compared to its recent pouring of hundreds of millions of dollars into GrabTaxi, Snapdeal, and Ola, but it's notable because it shows just how wide the company's investment portfolio is.
The company announced its plans to go Down Under at the end of January and in Sydney, which is its first full launch, Ola said it has signed up over 7,000 registered drivers.
Uber introduced its own version in India in November, with the country becoming the first expansion of the program outside of the U.S.. Ola claimed it is adding 1,000 new cars to its platform each day, but it is cagier on raw customer numbers.
With that in mind, Ola said it would gradually expand the program to cover more of its userbase, but it will be focused on the top, repeat passengers rather than everyone.
The Times Internet deal involves the media group providing marketing and other services to Uber specifically in India, where it is working hard to compete against local player Ola, and it was accompanied by a small investment of an undisclosed amount, the companies said when the deal was announced in March of this year.
I asked Ola if it was making money from those partnerships, but the firm said it is not and neither does it plan to.
Ola said it trialed the service with 10percentt of its 150 million users and saw a 90percentt repeat rate from those early users.
While the company competes fairly squarely with rivals like Grab (Southeast Asia) and Ola (India), it is in the process of selling its loss-making China business to rival Didi and recently "paused" its service in Taiwan following pushback from regulators.
Now, with Ola Play, it is once again putting the focus on experience.
