Indian ride-hailing service Ola, which counts Didi and SoftBank as investors, is launching in Australia; Europe-based Taxify also recently launched in Australia
it said today it is recruiting drivers in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth ahead of upcoming launches http://techcrunch.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Ola's move into Australia extends a playbook funded at home: after a stake purchase by Didi Kuaidi in 2015 and a $2B round from SoftBank and Tencent in late 2017, the Indian ride-hailing leader is recruiting drivers in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth ahead of launch. It is not entering an open field — Taxify has just launched there, and Didi itself runs DiDi Express in Melbourne as its third international market.
First-order effects
- Driver recruitment across three cities puts Ola straight into a supply-side contest with Uber, Taxify and Didi's own Melbourne operation for the same pool of drivers.
Second-order effects
- Taxify, which just entered Australia, now faces a second well-capitalized challenger alongside Uber, while Didi ends up competing against a company it partly owns in a market where it already operates.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Ola followed this Australia entry with a UK rollout beginning in South Wales — ride-hailing consolidates around a handful of cross-invested global platforms, and mid-size markets become multi-front subsidy battlegrounds rather than two-player duopolies.
The trend: SoftBank-interlocked ride-hailing platforms are exporting their home-market scale into overlapping international markets, turning each new city into a crowded, capital-intensive contest.