Taxi apps go into overdrive, duel over copycat offers

It would appear that the new breed of startups aren't ones to shy away from a confrontation. Case in point, a recent exchange of major shade between taxi apps Uber and Ola. The first match was lit when a user pointed out a similarity between an Ola promotional offer to that of Uber's.

Ola Cabs had recently launched a new service called 'Ola nights' wherein the cab company tied up with three pubs in Chennai offering users 'a buy one get one offer' on their Ola receipts.

On July 3, a Twitter user compared this with Uber India's similar 'UberApproved' service, where Uber, too, tied up with bars in Chennai in May and later, in Bengaluru and Mumbai. The user said, "OlaCabs following Uber India's footsteps." Uber took notice and responded with sarcasm, to which Ola Cabs replied, upping the sarcasm ante as it were.

@Uber_India Couldn't agree more! UberGo, Auto, Wallet, Cash - that's a lot of flattery! #WelcomeToIndia

— Ola (@Olacabs) July 4, 2015

While Ola was started by entrepreneur Bhavish Aggarwal in 2010, Uber rolled out its operations about two years ago. Both companies have been in direct competition with each other since then. For instance, Ola launched its autorickshaw service in March this year and Uber launched its similar service in April this year. The whole exchange ended, of course, with an acerbic signoff from Uber, which tweeted back to Ola, "Haha so contemptuous. Have a good weekend, guys!".