Given the objective and our primary audience - existing and potential driver partners, we decided that the best and the most impactful way to reach out to them would be through stories they could immediately relate to.

Thus, we decided to have Ola driver partners tell their own stories, collate these stories, and finally, disseminate these among media to encourage other driver partners to consider associating with Ola. We were confident that by bringing these driver partner success stories and endorsements to the forefront of our media narrative, we would inspire driver partners to join the Ola platform.

Next, we reached out to the already identified publications in 29 media centres across the country and pitched different stories. These stories were translated to over six regional languages and shared with media. We also facilitated more than 30 face-to-face interactions between drivers and journalists.

Driver profiling stories apart, we reached out to the media on multiple pro-driver initiatives by Ola. These include:

•Ola signing MoUs with seven state governments (Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Orissa, and Madhya Pradesh) for skilling new drivers

•Ola setting up 500 driving schools across India

•Ola signing MoUs with corporates, private agencies – Mahindra & Mahindra, National Skill Development Corporation, Rise India

•Ola organising 27 Driver Melas (fairs where drivers can avail of car loans & partner instantly)

•Ola organising driver health and wellness camps (checking eyesight, blood donation)

•Ola rewarding children of driver partners with laptops for school

Our media outreach efforts secured more than 500 inserts in 13 languages – yielding an ad-value of INR 650 million and 300 million opportunities-to-see (OTS). Number of cities covered: 29, including Tier I, Tier II and Tier III locations. Coverage was garnered across top mainline publications and online portals such as The Times of India, The Hindu, Hindustan Times, The Statesman, Yourstory and Business Insider. Among regional publications, we garnered inserts in Vijaya Karnataka, Amar Ujala, Navbharat Times, Punjab Kesari, Rashtriya Sahara, Dainik Jagran, Ei Samay and Aaj (all prominent publications) that carried extensive stories on the driver partners and highlighted Ola’s role in the betterment of their lives.

Ola in CY 2015 had 350,000 drivers. At the beginning of January 2017, it had over 600,000 driver partners!