Ola's New Notification Features to Keep Users Informed About Availability, Surge Pricing

If peak pricing in cab-aggregating apps has annoyed you in past, forced you to take a different travel option, or burnt a deep hole in your pocket, Ola's new features might peak your interest. The cab-aggregating app has introduced new notifications in order to help users book their rides with ease.

With its update, Ola has introduced features named 'Just in Time' and 'Rich Notifications' to the app. 'Just In Time' feature provides users with real-time notifications to the users "at the instant when a cab becomes available or when peak pricing for user's desired cab category ends," the company said in its press release.

The notifications will be sent to the users as soon as a cab of preference is available, even when they move away from the app. However, notifications will only be sent till up to 15 minutes of the user moving away from the app.

The 'Rich Notifications' feature provides users with real-time push notifications to help them track the rides that they booked. With this feature, the users will be provided with the driver's photo, contact details along with car model and number through a push notification.

"The notification window will be constantly updated with driver's ETA and customer's boarding status, without having to open the app repeatedly," Ola said.

Once the user boards the cab, the notification will include an 'Emergency SOS button' that sends an alert to the verified emergency contact with the customer's CRN, user details, location where the alert was raised, and details of cab and driver.

"Ola has always focused on ensuring adequate supply to match growing demand, but there are occasions when demand completely outstrips supply. To enable customers to do more while they wait to book or board a cab, Ola has developed 'Just in Time' and 'Rich Notifications', to provide real time cab updates. These features work on predictive analysis of data to provide smart real-time push notifications to its customers," company's co-founder and CTO was quoted as saying in the release.