Why the proposed Ola-TaxiForSure merger is bad news

While a merger intuitively makes economic sense, it’s not good for the customers. The industry is consolidating way too fast, and hopefully new challengers will arise soon

Today’s Economic Times reports that Ola Cabs is in the process of buying out competitor TaxiForSure. As a regular user of such services, I’m not happy, and I think this is a bad move. I must mention upfront, though, that I don’t use either of these two services much. I’ve never used TaxiForSure (mostly because I never find a cab using its service), and have used Ola sparingly (it’s my second choice after Uber, so use it only when Uber is not available).

Now, intuitively, consolidation in a platform industry is a good thing. This means that more customers and more drivers are on the same platform, and that implies that the possibility of finding a real-time match between a customer who wants a ride and a driver who wants to offer one is enhanced. The two-sided network effects that are inherent in markets like this imply super-linear returns to scale, and so such models work only at scale. This is perhaps the reason as to why this sector has drawn such massive investments.

While it is true that consolidation will mean lower matching cost for both customers and drivers, my view on this is that it’s happening too soon. The on-demand taxi market in India is still very young (it effectively took off less than a year back when Uber made its entry here. Prior to that, TaxiForSure was not “on demand” and Ola was too niche), and is still going through the process of experimentation that a young industry should.

For starters, the licensing norms for this industry are not clear (and it is unlikely they will be for a long time, considering how disruptive this industry is). Secondly, pricing models are still fluid and firms are experimenting significantly with them. As a corollary to that, driver incentive schemes (especially to prevent them from “multihoming”) are also  rather fluid. The process of finding a match (the process a customer and a driver have to go through in order to “match” with each other), is also being experimented with, though the deal indicates that the verdict on this is clear. Essentially there are too many things in the industry that are still fluid.

The problem with consolidation at a time when paradigms and procedures are still fluid is that current paradigms (which may not be optimal) will get “frozen”, and customers (and drivers) will have to live with the inefficiencies and suboptimalities that are part of the current paradigms. It looks as if after this consolidation the industry will settle into a comfortable duopoly, and comfortable duopolies are never great for innovation and for finding more optimal solutions.

Apart from the network effects, the reasons for the merger are clear, though – in the mad funding cycle unleashed by investors into this industry, TaxiForSure was a clear loser and was finding itself unable to compete against the larger better-funded rivals. Thus, it was a rational decision for the company to get acquired at this point in time. From Ola’s point of view, too, it is rational to do the deal, for it would give them substantial inorganic growth and undisputed number one position in the industry. For customers and drivers, though, now faced with lower choice, it is not a great deal.

This consolidation doesn’t mean the end, though. The strength of a robust industry is one where weak firms go out of business and new firms spring up in their place in their attempt to make a profit. That three has become two doesn’t mean that it should remain at two. There is room in the short term for a number three and even possibly a number four, as the Indian taxi aggregation industry tries to find its most efficient level.

I would posit that the most likely candidates to emerge as new challengers are companies such as Meru or EasyCabs, which are already in the cab provider business but only need to tweak their model to include an on-demand component. A wholly new venture to take up the place that is being vacated by TaxiForSure, however, cannot be ruled out. The only problem is that most major venture capitalists are in on either Uber or Ola, so it’s going to be a challenge for the new challenger to raise finances.

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I’m game for such a venture, and come on board to provide services in pricing, revenue management, availability management and driver incentive optimisation. 🙂
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