Ola is one of the leading ride-hailing apps. It criticized the other rival company Uber for highlighting a sexual assault case which happened in December 2014 in New Delhi. Eric Alexander who was the business head for Asia Pacific region for Uber has been fired for obtaining the reports on the women who was raped in the Uber cab.
Uber is one of the highly valued started businesses in India and Alexender showed the report to the Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick and SVP Emil Michel explaining that the victim has given a false report and the incident was untrue. Alexender stated that Ola, their competitor is the reason behind this. He has even saved the medical report with him for a year before destroying them.
“If the report were even remotely true, this is an all time low morality and a reflection of the very character of the organization,” wrote a representative from Ola in response to ET’s query on the allegation.Further, the representative from Ola explained that “It is a shame that privacy and the morals of women have to be questioned in an attempt to trivialize a horrific crime. It is despicable that anyone can even convince an attempt to malign competition using this an opportunity”
The driver Shiv Kumar Yadav, who was found guilty in November 2016, was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment. Even now the companies are forced to verify their drivers and are supposed to work according to the newly issued rules for the ride-hailing apps.
Along with Alexender, 20 other employees were fired. The reason being for them was harassment, discrimination, and other HR related matters. Even 100 employees are going through the investigation process. For the matters coming up like this to Uber, a chief operating officer will be appointed by Kalanick to run all the daily activities.
The latest development comes at a time when Ola which is owned by a Japanese conglomerate Softbank, is locked in a battle with the under for dominance in Asia’s third- largest economy. For the global consumers, India is viewed as the next battleground as it has more opportunities than China. Comparing the statistic of Uber and Ola, Uber has 400,000 drivers which are working in 29 cities across the whole India whereas Ola has 550,000 drivers who are working in 110 cities of India.
The work culture in Uber has been described as toxic which has mismanagement and cases of sexual harassment are even observed. Kalanick is taking actions on it to improve the environment. Thus Uber is gearing up now to bring reforms in the environment.
