India's homegrown ride-hailing giant Ola has joined hands with global tech giant Google for its 'outstation' category. The new partnership will allow people using the services of Ola for their outstation journeys to easily find and book their inter-city rides facilitated by Google maps, which is considered as one of the best web mapping service that there is today.

According to a statement released by both the companies announcing the commencement of the new partnership, people travelling travelling between Indian cities will now be able to discover Ola Outstation, a smart mobility solution for inter-city travel on Google maps for mobile, thereby, directing these commuters to the Ola app to conveniently complete the booking. Yes, it will be that simple.

The press release added that the Ola Outstation category will initially enable outstation bookings from 23 cities to over 215 one-way routes in the Indian subcontinent. This will then be extended to a total of 500 routes in the coming weeks.

People contemplating travelling outstation for work or leisure can easily type in their destination on Google Maps, then progress on to the navigation tab and choose Ola as their commute option. Once they choose Ola, the commuters will be directly taken to the Ola booking screen in the Ola App.

Launched a year ago in 2016, Ola Outstation has written itself a glorious one year of operation with numerous milestones unlocked and various others remaining to be crossed. According to Vijay Ghadge, VP of Operations at Ola, this association with Google takes the company a step further in making the category as reliable and convenient as intra-city commute.

This isn't Ola's first association with Google. Prior to this, Ola had collaborated with the tech giant last year in October and integrated its intra-city cab travel options with Google Maps, enabling its users to discover cab options with estimated fares and estimated time of arrivals at their locations.

The cab hailing category is seeing a rapid increase in India despite the flailing economy and frequent tax reforms in the country. According to a recent report by business research firm RedSeer Consulting, despite supply side disruptions and regulatory challenges, online cab aggregators like Uber and Ola completed half a billion rides in the year 2016. This means the market saw 280 per cent growth compared to 2015, when the industry witnessed 130 million rides.

SoftBank-backed, home-grown company Ola and San Francisco-based Uber account for a majority of this growing market. However, Ola is currently leading the market. This association with Google for its Outstation category is just one of the many things Ola is doing to ensure that it doesn't loses its numero uno crown to the number two, Uber.
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