Ola in global alliance to take on Uber

A global cab-aggregator alliance is emerging to take on ride-hailing app Uber. Ola of India, Didi Kuaidi of China, Lyft of the US, and GrabTaxi of Malaysia have inked a global ride-sharing partnership under which their respective apps can be used in any of the countries in which the others operate.

The four-way alliance comes close on the heels of China's largest taxi-aggregator app Didi Kuaidi investing in Ola and picking up stakes in San Francisco-based Lyft and in GrabTaxi, which has a presence across Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Ola will roll out the offerings in the January-March quarter of next year. With that, Ola users travelling to China, for instance, can use the Ola app to book a ride on Didi Kuaidi and users travelling to the US can use the app to book a ride on Lyft. "We are excited to partner with Lyft, Didi Kuaidi and GrabTaxi, allowing seamless mobility access across hundreds of cities globally for our combined user base that runs into hundreds of millions," said Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO of Ola. "This will also allow all four companies to learn from each other's local innovations and successes that can help us in our shared mission to build better mobility solutions in our respective markets." Ola has ramped up its presence to 102 cities across the country with more than 350,000 vehicles registered on its platform. It receives over a million booking requests a day.

Didi provides 7 million rides per day across 360 Chinese cities, while Lyft is the fastest-growing rideshare service in the Unites States, offering 7 million rides per month in more than 190 cities. GrabTaxi offers up to 1.5 million daily bookings across its six countries. Uber is present across over 300 cities in 66 countries, and is one of the world's most valued companies. Its last round of funding valued it at $50 billion.Collectively, Ola, Didi, Lyft and GrabTaxi have raised more than $7 billion.

Ola recently raised $500 million from Scottish investment firm Baillie Gifford, Didi Kuaidi and existing investors Falcon Edge, Tiger Global, SoftBank and DST Global, a funding round that valued the four-year-old startup at $5 billion. Cheng Wei, CEO of Didi Kuaidi, said, "The partnership with Lyft, GrabTaxi and Ola allows Chinese users unprecedented ease of international travel, and helps partners improve our own services leveraging each other's technology and expertise. This will be a win for the diversity and vitality of the global rideshare industry."

Lyft co-founder and president John Zimmer said, "This isn't solely an alliance of four companies, but also an opportunity to have a greater impact on the future of our cities worldwide."