How would you improve Ola Cabs?

Hey fam, this is the 6th article of the #30daysofproduct series, in this, I would be solving a problem on Product improvement and for this exercise, I choose Ola. Please do give it a read and let me know what you think :)

The structure to answer this question, I would be following is -

1. Clarify the scope of the question
2. Describe the product
3. Finalize a goal or a metric to work upon
4. Describe different user groups
5. List the pain points
6. Prioritize & evaluate the solutions
7. Define metrics
8. Summarise the case study

Initially, the clarifying questions I would be asking here -

• Are we focusing on the web app or mobile app (Interviewer — Mobile App)
• Under mobile apps are there any versions you want me to consider? (No)
• What do you mean by improvement? (Focus on engagement & revenue)
• Under this you want me to focus on a particular category i.e. either driver or rider? (You choose)
• Is there any particular location/region you want me to focus on? (No)
• Is there any specific problem, which I can solve? (You choose)
• Ola has different verticals, anything specific I should focus on? (Consider Ride-hailing services only)

Now talking about Ola — Ola is India’s largest mobility platform and one of the world’s largest ride-hailing companies, serving 250+ cities across India. The Ola app offers mobility solutions by connecting customers to drivers and a wide range of vehicles across bikes, auto-rickshaws, and cabs.

As the interviewer mentioned earlier, we want to focus on Engagement & Revenue, so for this, I would like to cover up for the riders, although both rider & driver are important for a fruitful cycle, but the majority of users are riders, so defining user groups among them here -

• Power Users - These are the people who daily or many times use the Ola cab service, to move within the city like the daily office-going workers.
• Occasional Users - These are the people who occasionally use the service maybe 3 or 4 times within a month, such as students, tourists, party-goers, friends for hanging out & fun.
• Casual Users - These are the people who only use the service when they really need it, such as users who are going from home to the airport, or for any special occasion.

Under these three different categories, I would like to focus on the Occasional users, as these are the people who have the potential to book more rides & help us in driving the engagement.

Listing the pain points for the occasional users -

1. For the school-going students, their parents care more about their safety & don’t want to compromise on safety & security.
2. Also, they found it difficult to book multiple cabs, for both arrival & departure. Even for the users like tourists, they need to take multiple cabs, to travel the whole city & booking multiple times is a real pain for them.
3. Tourists might don’t know more about the particular country/city & needs guidance to view multiple places.

Now, based upon them few solutions could be -

1. To promote more safety, Ola can tie up with different Universities & schools. This way parents could trust those rides, as now these would be affiliated with their children's school or colleges. This won’t only give Ola a new addition to their services, but also a big chance to expand and bring more users.
2. To bring more safety, Ola could advise drivers to install a small camera, so that the person riding in the vehicle, is visible anytime to another person.
3. Ola could introduce, schedule a cab feature, this way busy people under this group, could easily plan their day initially, so they don’t need to book cabs at different times, even this would remove the possibility of not finding a cab or driver canceling the ride.
4. Ola could tie-up with Google maps, to show the most visited places in that particular region, to the rider and help them make their decision.

Now, after listing multiple solutions, we can prioritize those on the basis of Impact vs Effort. So, building a table here -

Comparing Impact vs Effort

We clearly see we could go with building the first feature, although that requires a good amount of effort, but on the other hand reward we’re getting is also measurable & big. For the same few metrics that I would measure are -

• # of collaborations with schools & universities.
• # of new users acquired after launching the program
• # of increase in the number of rides
• # of active usage of the features
• # of increase in revenue

Thus, now we can conclude the interview, after summarising the whole study.

I would love to know what you would do to improve the Ola cabs, let me know in the comments, and if you liked the article please do HIT the CLAPS. You can always socialize with me, here at LinkedIn or at my portfolio. Cheers!