On New Year's Eve, Ola to deploy 'Safety Scouts' in seven cities

In a bid to provide safety and mobility support to citizens in high traffic areas on New Year's Eve, Indian ride hailing company Ola on Monday announced it will deploy hundreds of "Safety Scouts" across Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata on December 31.

The "Safety Scouts" comprise both male and female personnel who are specially trained by the company to help provide safety and mobility support to citizens.

"At Ola, we are committed to our mission of building mobility for a billion people and building a safe experience is an integral part of this mission. New Year's Eve sees a large number of people going out for the night to celebrate, and through these efforts, we are encouraging people to take a safe ride back home," Arun Srinivas, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer, Ola, said in a statement.

The ride-hailing company has also collaborated with the police in cities like Pune, to support their on-ground efforts.

The firm's quick response team cars in the city will also have female police constables on-board to support existing police fleet and attend to SOS calls from women.

This is in line with Ola's national roll-out of AI-enabled safety feature called "Guardian" which uses real-time data from rides to automatically detect irregular trip activity and triggers a phone call by Ola's "Safety Response Team".