Disclaimer: I don’t have any inside info of Ola. This is a basic framework for growing any on-demand ride hailing product.

If I was the CEO of Ola, here is how I would think about growing Ola’s revenue. Growth can either be 1% experiments or big bets, but finally it all boils down to the following framework. Don’t bother about the exact ideas below. Those are just placeholders.

Let’s start.

Revenue growth = Order Growth * Ticket size expansion

Order Growth = Market Expansion * Category expansion * Use case expansion * Top of the funnel improvement * Product funnel conversion * User funnel conversion

Ticket size expansion = Up sell * Pricing experiments * More fees

Market Expansion = Country or Region expansion; think about where the next phase of growth will come from

  • Expansion in more cities in India
  • Entering new countries

Category expansion = More categories in existing cities or introducing completely new categories

  • Wheelchair/ Disabled booking
  • Child (school commute use case)

Use case expansion = Cater to new use cases

  • Book via SMS
  • Book via call center (for people who find the app flow tough to navigate)

Top of the funnel improvement = Get more users to enter the booking funnel

  • Better targeted mails
  • Better push notifications

Product funnel conversion = EBCR and BCR improvement from X to Y

  • Homepage experiments
  • Vouchers

EBCR = Estimate screen to Confirm booking conversion, BCR = Booking confirmed to Booking completed conversion, X = Current conversion %, Y = Conversion % we want to reach.

User funnel conversion = How to improve % of power users

  • Better targeting through vouchers
  • Better notifications
  • Better retargeting 
  • Better experience for first time users

Ticket size expansion = Up sell * Pricing experiments * More fees

  • Up sell users to Premium and Large
  • Personalised pricing
  • Experiment with waiting, cancellation, schedule, multi stop and edit fees 

Master post: Frameworks to think about growth