Ola is launching in London in the coming weeks and has invited "tens of thousands" of Private Hire Vehicle (PHV) drivers to onboard themselves on the platform, the company said in a statement. Ola had received a 15-month long licence from Transport for London (TfL), the city's transport regulator, on July 4, to operate PHV vehicles across the city. “We are inviting the tens of thousands of PHV drivers across London to register themselves on the Ola platform, as we prepare to launch in the city in the coming weeks,” Simon Smith, Head of International, Ola, had said in a statement on November 26. The ride-hailing firm launched its operations in the UK in August 2018, starting with Cardiff. It is currently operating in cities such as Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool. Ola wants to onboard Black Cabs in London: Ola has reached out to the London Taxi Drivers’ Association (LTDA) and other groups so that it can list black cabs in London in the future, people familiar with the matter told MediaNama. However, the company is currently focusing only on its launch in London and not on onboarding black cabs, we were told. Why this matters: Ola’s announcement comes only two days after Uber was stripped of its licence in London after Transport for London (TfL), the city’s transport authority, found that at least 14,000 trips were taken with drivers who had faked their identity on Uber’s app. TfL said that it identified a “pattern of failures” by Uber, which included unauthorised…
