Meet the ex-soldier taking on Uber taxis in Merseyside with Olahttps://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/bu ... r-16049958Indian giant Ola has launched its private hire app in Liverpool
Image: Liverpool EchoHe's a former soldier who's had top jobs at Coca Cola and Google - now Ben Legg is taking on Uber and moving into the Liverpool taxi and private hire market.
Mr Legg leads Indian ride-hailing app firm Ola, which this month (March) launched in Liverpool with a promotional push including a fleet of people in luminous green jackets driving tuk tuks.
Ola already has hundreds of drivers in the city region and licences across its boroughs.
Unlike Uber it works with private hire and hackney carriage drivers.
Liverpool is the fifth British city where Ola has launched its operations .
Mr Legg, Ola's UK managing director who visited Liverpool this month to launch the business, said: "Why Liverpool? Basically because we want to get bigger.
"We want to enter into the North of England and Liverpool looked like a great place to start. Secondly, we want to get bigger and bigger with our cities, so after Bristol we thought Liverpool would be an awesome next step.
"Also the council seem very innovative and enthusiastic about innovation in the space.
"Some councils can be a bit more slow, bureaucratic, and Liverpool I thought was both fast and professional."
Ola differentiates itself from Uber by making its app available to private hire vehicles and black cabs.
The rivalry between private hire and black cab drivers can be intense and the arrival of Uber stirred things up further.
But the upbeat Mr Legg is confident Ola can work alongside other drivers.
He said: "It's working really well for us. for customers like it because they get a choice or private hire or taxis. And different rides have different benefits."
Rival Uber has faced battles over licenses in the UK. Transport to London once refused to review its licence, while locally there were furious rows over drivers licenced in other areas picking up passengers in Liverpool.
Mr Legg didn't discuss Uber directly. But when he discussed his Silicon Valley experience, he said Ola was a "sleeves rolled-up" company that believed in working with local people and regulators.
He said: "For example unlike some other players, we only launch in particular where we have a licence, where we're met the local council, probably met the local police, we have an office, we have people on the ground, and we meet drivers as part of the onboarding process.
"It's a very human process, which is a little expensive but it's getting things set up right from the beginning. And it's kind of working.
"So we've been picking up licences that maybe other big app operators haven't picked up just by turning up, being polite."
Mr Legg himself has had to get his sleeves rolled up.
He said: "I've taken exams on taxi law in portakabins in South Gloucestershire, so I have a very glamorous life. You get grilled by ex-policemen working in licensing offices.
"It's what it takes to earn the trust of local communities so that's what we're doing."
Mr Legg wasn't from a military family but knew he wanted to join the Army from the age of three.
He said: "As a teenager I was good at maths and physics and stuff so people were saying 'what about banking or insurance or accountancy? And compared to the Army they sounded boring."
He went on to do officer training at Sandhurst and wound up in the Royal Engineers "building things and blowing things up".
That included building bomb-proof structures in Northern Ireland and working with a multinational force in Bosnia to help relieve the siege of Sarajevo.
Running a private hire app may seem rather different, but Mr Legg agrees that the project planning skills he learned in the Army have stayed with him.
He said: "The Army is a work hard play hard place. There's a lot of project management, especially within the Royal Engineers, because everything you build is a project, everything you blow up too.
"Obviously you put a lot of effort and training into teamwork and leadership and communication and other things.
"The other thing I like is that when you've been in the Army, nothing in business is particularly scary. It helps give you a sense of perspective on stuff, and not get too stressed."
After the military he worked for Coca Cola in Greece, Poland and India.
He then moved to Google, where he ended up as chief operating office for Europe. He worked with a team leading Google "from a scrappy start-up to a professionally-run business".
He said: " Ola is in some ways is a multi billion-dollar start-up.
"Right now I'm focused on making the UK a model for other international markets for Ola. And obviously with each city we want to do things a bit better, run the launch a bit better, run the operations a bit better, work out city management a bit better etc."
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