Mobile Application Based Transportation Network Uber and another Indian Application based online taxi service Ola are now blocked by the Government of Delhi, India. OlaCabs is an online cab aggregator based out of Mumbai and among the fastest growing taxi hiring firms. Taxi booking facility can be availed through an application, website or through calls. Uber is an application that allows consumers to submit a trip request, which is routed to crowd-sourced taxi drivers. Uber was launched in 2009 by Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp. It was one of the most successful start-ups of Silicon Valley. Uber had streams of fund coming in from investors like Jeff Bezos, Chris Sacca and Goldman Sachs. The service was launched in San Francisco in June 2010. Uber kept on expanding and is now available in more than 55 countries and 200 cities worldwide.
Uber has been subjected to negative publicity many times. Uber was launched on September 2014 in India and ever since then it was first shut down in Karnataka as the Government there banned all unauthorised taxi services. After that, it was banned in Hyderabad by the Government and it asked the public to cease using Uber cab services. The most negative impact on Uber was the December 2014 Rape Case in Delhi. A Uber Driver was allegedly involved in sexually assaulting a woman. The driver had been charged, then acquitted, of a prior sexual assault in 2011. Within two days of the rape incident, almost 7,000 people signed a petition calling on Uber to conduct mandatory seven-year background checks on drivers, in line with its U.S. operations. Uber was banned from New Delhi for not following the city’s compulsory police verification procedure.
In March 2015, Ola and Uber were requested to stop working in Delhi, but they didn’t comply with the orders. Delhi government’s department of Telecom has banned Uber, Ola, and other Online Taxi services today. This time the Department of Telecommunication has issued a direct order to all the ISP’s in the city to block all the websites and applications of all these transportation networks. If any ISP fails to do that, then they will be charged for it. Uber’s future does not seem very good in India at this point.