Ola sprung into action to create Ola Boat to provide timely aid to stricken customers, who were trying to hail cabs in their desperation to escape the floods.

Ola Boat- a temporary free service made up of 14 hired boats manned by firemen from the Fire and Rescue Department of Tamil Nadu along with local fishermen. The boats and the service were the idea, the media and the message.

This idea that went beyond mere communication. Ola Boat delivered what no Facebook post or tweet or freebie or campaign could- safety and hope.

Within a few hours of the city getting flooded, the Ola Boat initiative was pressed into action. 14 boats manned by personnel from the Fire and Rescue Department, local firemen and fishermen were deployed with essential supplies for free distribution like drinking water, food and basic medicines.

The boats were deployed with just a tweet about the service. Stranded people who needed the service were asked to tweet their location with #OlaBoat. In addition to going to locations requested by people, Ola Boats were deployed to 8 areas identified by on ground rescue agencies that were not receiving enough assistance.

After the initial tweet, Ola did not need to employ any other media. Volunteers, other rescue personnel and people impacted spread the word about the service. The boats made over 200 trips with more than 700 man hours and provided relief and safety to nearly 750 families.

- Within 4 hours of being launched, the initiative provided relief and rescue to nearly 300 families.

- Within 2 hours of the launch #OlaBoat became a top trending topic on Twitter

- The rescue effort started getting covered by by leading national and international publications within 5 hours of the launch of the service.

- In total, 30 international publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BBC and Huffington Post. It was also covered by more than 50 leading national publications and news channels.

- In a span of two days, Ola Boat had over 130 stories in print, electronic & digital media around the world.

-There were 79 million social media impressions with 6043 unique authors engaged and 8567 mentions on Facebook & Twitter.

-The initiative generated a total Earned Media Value of INR 22 million (USD 0.32 million).