Ride-sharing platform BlaBlaCar to offer rides as per Delhi's odd-even plan

Ride-sharing platform BlaBlaCar will launch a new feature that will allow its users in Delhi to offer rides on specific days depending on their number plates in compliance with the state government's proposed odd-even formula. The Paris-headquartered firm, which launched its services in India in January this year, has already seen one million seats being offered through its platform in the country.

"Now that the (Delhi) government has proposed the odd-even formula, our platform will soon allow people to show the availability on specific dates depending on their number plates," BlaBlaCar Country Manager India Raghav Gupta said. This will add to the ease of both the driver and the passengers, he told PTI.

"While we are a preferred platform for long-distance travel, we also see a huge traction for short distance like Delhi-Gurgaon, Delhi-Noida and Noida-Gurgaon," he said. The Delhi government will implement its much debated odd-even car scheme from January 1, 2016, allowing vehicles with licence plates ending with odd and even numbers to ply on alternate days.

The scheme will be reviewed after first 15 days and the government will then study its impact and would then decide if the plan will be extended further or not. Transport aggregators like Uber and Ola are working on ensuring that there are enough cars available on their platform, once the scheme kicks in.

Uber is looking at enabling private car owners in the city to car pool through its platform, while Ola expects to meet to meet the heavy demand through its range of options like cabs, autos and shuttle. Talking about the expansion, Gupta said over one million seats have been offered on its platform in India since its launch in India earlier this year.

"This translates to 55 million kilometres shared so far through ride-sharing (or carpooling) on BlaBlaCar across 700 cities. These figures highlight the strong uptake of ride-sharing across India, owing to the lack of sufficient public transport infrastructure across many large cities as well as smaller towns," he said.

Gupta said its users are ride-sharing for trips ranging from 1 to 10 hours, including people commuting from satellite cities to city centres for work. For city-to-city travel, BlaBlaCar is very popular on Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Jaipur, Mumbai-Pune, Chennai-Bangalore routes, amongst many others across the country, he added. Set up in 2006, BlaBlaCar has over 20 million members in 19 countries.

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