Talkwalker’s Battle of the Brands: Uber Vs Ola

India is a melting pot of activity these days – mostly because the elections are upon us and IPL is in full swing. And brands here and there are trying to leverage the heightened activity in the country over the past month. Both Uber and Ola are household names in India and both have been making waves over the last month. So we thought why not weigh them against each other to see how they fare?

 

Talkwalker, a social media analytics company, based in Luxembourg, takes a closer look at the buzz, using their platform. Talkwalker Analytics analyzes the performance of mentions all over the internet and provides key metrics such as engagement, related themes, demographic data, geographic data and influencer data. 

 

Mentions: On the face of it, Uber seems to lead the way where mentions are concerned. Though Ola had a massive peak towards the end of March, Uber has a more consistent trajectory throughout. Except for the last week or so where they’ve seen a huge rise in mentions. Digging deeper, we can see that the huge spike in Ola mentions is due to the ban in Bengaluru. Angry consumers who probably used Ola on a daily basis are using social media to express their disappointment with regard to the Ola ban. 

 

The Uber spikes over the last week had a lot to do with the incidents in Mumbai involving Uber drivers. One where an Uber driverrefused to switch on his AC when a lady passenger politely asked him to do so and asked “PM Modi” to send her a cab and another where an Uber driver seemed to lose his cool after seeing the Shivaji theatre in Mumbai. 

 

Therefore, we’re not sure as to whether a higher number of mentions are a good thing for Uber. 

 

 

Hashtags: Apart from the ban and the negative publicity, what else are people talking about with respect to these massive brands? Let’s take a look at the most used hashtags 

 

We can see that the conversation around Uber is largely around a possible IPO. Other unicorn startups like Airbnb, Slack and WeWork are prominently featured along with the hashtags “#ipo” and “#stockmarket”. 

 

Ola’s main hashtag - #JDSJawabDo – is to do with the ban in Bengaluru. Apart from that, their memorable April Fools day prank – #OlaRestrooms – finds mention as well as rival, Uber.

 

 

(Next week: Which cities drive the buzz for the cab aggregators?)