Olacabs partners with MakeMyTrip to provide car rental services in Mumbai, Bangalore & Delhi-NCR

Mumbai-based ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs an online marketplace for cabs and car rental services under the brand Olacabs, has tied-up with online travel company MakeMyTrip (India) Pvt Ltd to offer car rentals for local and outstation travels in Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi-NCR ,  three cities where Olacabs is present. Apart from car rentals, customers can also opt for pickup and drop to the airport (while booking on MakeMyTrip) and avail of a 10 per cent discount on the taxi fare.

"We are currently looking to increase our presence across the country. We will continue to look for strategic partnerships and are confident that the partnership with MMT will be a win-win at both ends," said Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO, Olacabs. The company plans to expand its services to four more Indian cities by the end of the financial year.

Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) have gradually added a number of travel-related services to their offerings like hotel accommodations and airport drop and pick up. Car rental services further enable online travel customers to get all their travel-related needs answered through one interface.

Olacabs was founded in January 2011 by two IIT Bombay alumni Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati. The company raised over $5 million in Series A funding from Tiger Global in April this year. Prior to that, it had raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from Anupam Mittal and Rehan Yar Khan, along with a few unnamed investors. The services provided by Olacabs include point-to-point services within the city, hour-based rental services and bookings for outstation travel.

The company also offers mobile apps to book and track cabs through smartphones that provide users instantaneous confirmation of booking along with necessary details including name and contact number of the cab driver, vehicle number, and real time movement of the cab from its location to the pickup point of the customer.

In the online car rentals space, the company competes with TaxiForSure, YourCabs, TaxiGUIDE and Savaari, among others.

(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)