In a notice published in a newspaper, Ola has confirmed that it will shut down the Ola Play service in India on November 15. ANI Technologies, the parent company of Ola, claims that it has taken appropriate measures to remove the segment from the market.
Ola Play was launched in 2016 to let customers enjoy music, TV shows, and music on a tablet placed in the car. Ola also partnered with some content creators to get their content on Play Play. The service was launched to offer a better in-car experience to premium customers. If you use the tablet to watch content, it keeps a track of your watch history. So, you can resume playing your last played content on your next ride.
Ola Play was an open platform that lets app developers customize their offerings for the platform. When the platform was announced, the company had high hope, but it didn’t go as planned. The company also never revealed the actual numbers to let us know how many Ola customers use the service.
Ola Play looked promising but the project had several challenges. It was not easy to maintain the hardware. The company needed an effective advertisement model because customers hardly pay extra to avail of these services.
Ola was not the only one that experimented with in-car tablets. Lyft also launched in-car tablets offering integrated music experience, dynamic route maps, and more. An interesting thing is that Uber, Ola’s main rival in India, recently started testing in-car tablets to show advertisements and value-added services to riders.
