Nov 30, 2015 - Diversification: How much is too much?

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Sree Vijaykumar From the Editor's Desk So, I have been using both Ola and Uber a lot recently, for very different reasons. After enjoying the better cars and service with Uber, it seemed like Uber was on constant 'surcharge' mode. Even late morning and early afternoon rides had 1.5x to 3x 'surcharge' turned on, so I decided it's time to go back to good old Ola for a bit. Two of my recent Ola rides had rickety cars with ACs not working and one of the drivers complaining that he hadn't been paid by Ola for 2 months. Now, that worried me a little bit, because I do want Ola to succeed. The company has gotten into unrelated areas like food delivery. I can only imagine investor pressures and fundraising dynamics behind such premature diversification. The problem of customer service unfortunately is not something that just gets 'solved'. It's a day-in-day-out problem. Take your eyes off the ball and your customers go elsewhere. 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