Ola Uber debate takes nasty turn

The accusation game between Ola and Uber has taken a nasty turn now as it entered the realm of the nationalism debate.

Referring to Uber’s blog post on Tuesday where it had alleged Uber of being ‘foreign’, Ola’s Chief Operating Officer at Ola, Pranay Jivrajka has now responded stating the debate as irrelevant and pointed out it is not about foreign vs. local but it is about who is respectful of the local laws and who is not.

The post was titled “The Law is the Law”. Jivarajka further posted, “It is a shame that our competition (read Uber) has to fan a debate of nationalism to hide their identity of being a multi-national, with serial violations of law as a business strategy, not just in India, but globally.”

Pointing the finger at Uber, Jivarajka accused that the company still runs UberMoto service illegally in Gurgaon, on private white number plates. He also pointed out how Uber initially launched with a ‘card on file’ payment system which was in gross violation of RBI regulations.

Ola blogpost

“Yet they continued this for more than a year, fully knowing the violation, and it took an ultimatum from the Governor of the RBI to make them fall in line.”

He went on to state the instance during Delhi’s Diesel ban, when Ola committed to 100% CNG adoption of vehicles within the state proactively, while ‘Uber chose to continue plying diesel vehicles with absolute disregard for the state and the court of law’.

“They continued even after the High Court Orders came into effect until a contempt petition forced them to cease and desist.”

The spat started when Ola defended Karnataka’s new regulations governing tech-based cab hailing services, and at the same time accused Uber India of flouting all norms. In a lengthy affidavit to the High Court, which is looking into the legal validity of the April 2 regulations notified by the government, Ola said that it is the only cab aggregator to have been issued a license under the new regulations because it has satisfied all conditions.