Ola shuts food and grocery delivery service as Uber ups heat

An Ola-branded taxi in India.

Transport technology is serious business, especially if you are in India. Just ask Uber and Ola.

In the race to win, the two companies have tried a bunch of different services and customizations to woo Indian consumers, including motorbike taxis, wifi-enabled cabs, and cash payments.

Ola, however, went a step further and introduced grocery and food deliveries, in what critics saw as an aping of Uber’s similar tests in the United States.

Sometimes, however, experiments can fail. On Thursday, Ola said it was shutting both its grocery and food delivery services, to focus on what it does best – transport people.

“As we strengthen our focus on building mobility for a billion people, we are drawing these two experiments to a close and taking learnings from these to serve you better in the time to come,” Ola said on its company blog.

Uber pressure

Interestingly, the update came on the same day Uber announced its latest move to schmooze up to India – the San Francisco-based company set up its Asian engineering center in Bangalore.

Stuck in Bangalore traffic. Photo credit: Mr Thinktank

“Launching Asia’s first engineering center in Bangalore is a testament to our commitment to investing in India, and I can’t wait to see the innovations that will come from this team as they work to support the phenomenal growth of our business in cities across the country,” Uber’s technology chief said in a statement.

Uber has been steadily upping the heat in India over the past year, focusing heavily on core technological investments.

It’s a testament to our commitment to investing in India.

Meanwhile, many investors have expressed doubts about Ola trying to put its finger in too many pies as competition gets intense.

In the past few months, the company has been falling behind Uber in big ticket launches (or at least announcements, as in the case with bike taxis), making industry watchers wonder if the Indian startup is falling back in the race.

Grocery is for the experts