Indian Economy News

Ola raises US$ 500 million-funds from SoftBank, other investors

Bengaluru: Ola, the app-based cab ride aggregator, said on Wednesday it has raised $500 million (Rs 3,300 crore) in the sixth round of fund-raising from investors -- including Baillie Gifford, Falcon Edge, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group and DST Global.

“As we pursue our mission to build mobility for a billion people, we are excited about bringing onboard partners who can help us get there faster. We will continue to build for the local market through innovative solutions like Ola Share, Ola Prime and Ola Money, as we grow the mobile ecosystem in India,” Bhavish Aggarwal, Ola’s co-founder and CEO, said.

Fresh funds will be utilised to fuel supply initiatives, capacity building and newer use cases (like shuttle services and car pool services like Ola Share) and venturing deeper into existing markets, Ola said in a statement.

Among the new initiatives, the company has also started talks with state-owned oil marketing company Indian Oil to provide fuel cards to its driver partners.

Ola’s latest round of funding comes just months after San Francisco-based Uber announced that it will invest $1 billion in India.

A source, which was involved closely in the latest funding talks, said the company has offloaded approximately 10% for this capital raised, taking the valuation of Ola to around $5 billion. Hindustan Times could not confirm this with Ola or an independent source.

Ola also said it has grown by over 30 times in the last one year, now clocking over 1 million booking requests a day. It added that it now covers over 3,50,000 vehicles registered on its platform, spread across 102 cities in India.

With the current round, Ola has closed over $1.3 billion (Rs 8,600 crore) of external funding, of which over $1.2 billion (Rs 7,900 crore) has been raised over the past year. In April 2015, Ola raised $400 million (Rs 2,600 crore) of funding led by DST Global in Series E and prior to that $210 million (Rs 1,400 crore) -- led by SoftBank Group as part of its Series D round in October 2014.

Ola counts Tiger Global, Matrix Partners, Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Accel Partners US and Falcon Edge also amongst its existing investors.

Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.

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