Ola Play, your source of entertainment on the go!

Travelling on the cab with no source of entertainment or do you think the AC is too cool but still hestitating to ask the driver to adjust the temperature.

Well, Ola unveiled a new car entertainment platform for its passengers that lets you listen to the music of your choice and users can also take control of the air conditioning and other features in a cab through Ola Play app.

At present, Ola Play is aimed at attracting business travellers that use Ola Prime, its line of mid-sized sedans. This comes in as a desparate attempt to fight the growing competetion from Uber that is gaining ground.

So how do they plan to achieve these services? Simple. Ola Play is a result of partnership with Apple Music and Sony Pictures India for digital entertainment.

The company faces a mounting threat from Uber since Uber sold its China operations to Didi Chuxing in August, extracting itself from a costly competition and freeing up funds for it to focus on India, its second largest market outside the United States.

Ola said its new Play offering will allow riders, via their smartphones, to play songs from Apple Music, Sony Liv, or other platforms. Third-party developers will also be able to develop apps for Ola Play. Entertainment, shopping and tourism apps will be among the first to be featured.

Ride hailing company Ola has launched Ola Play, an in-car system that lets users take control of features inside the car, like entertainment and air conditioning.

Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder of Ola said on Tuesday, “We want to bring together the power of the internet and a cab ride into one place… No one has done it before, our team has worked on it for a year.”

The cabs will be equipped with Ola Play much like an in-flight entertainment system, which can be controlled by passengers. It will allow users to take control of the car’s air conditioning and other features through the Ola app when they get into a cab.

Ola Play device runs on a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. It has been put together by a team of engineers based in Bengaluru over the last 12 months.

The system definitely is a first in its league and will give Ola a competetive edge above other app aggregators.