Not so cheap! Ola Micro charges more than Rs 6 per km for your taxi ride

Large hoardings of Ola Micro offering a ride at just Rs 6(*) per kilometre adorn the streets of many metros in India, including Mumbai. 

Notice the devilish star-mark after Rs 6 on those ads and in the sentence above? 

Zee Business took a ride in Ola Micro to decode what this star, denoting terms and conditions, actually means and what he customer ends up paying. 

Well, let's cut to the chase and say it directly. The ride actually costs you over 50% more. Yes. 

The bill is attached below for Ola Micro for a ride of just under 20 kilometres. At Rs 6 per kilometre, this should ideally cost less than Rs 120. But the customer ended up paying Rs 210--a full Rs 90 more. 

Taxes apart, Ola also charges what they call a ride time charge of Re 1 per minute. So, a 35-minute ride means Rs 35 more for the trip. 

This simply means that without taxes the customer has paid Rs 7.75 (approximately) for the ride--more than Rs 6 per km. 

Now add the base fare of Rs 45 (for Mumbai) to this. The ride cost without taxes come to Rs 10 per km. 

Adding a total tax of Rs 11.49 takes the fare to Rs 210 which is 75% more than what's advertised. But one can let go of the taxes part for this calculation. 

However, Ola, a ride of Rs 6 per km atually cost nearly double. 

Something to ponder over.  

Here is break up of the Ola Micro bill:

Now Uber has also slashed prices of UberGO service to match and compete with Ola Micro. We will see how much Uber ends up charging the customers under the garb of 'terms and conditions'.