 "Ola raises $500 million from Tiger, Softbank and Didi Kuaidi")
Ola, the app-based taxi hailing service, has raised over $ 500 million (Rs 3,500 crore) from existing investors such as Softbank, Tiger Global, DST Global and new investors such as Baillie Gifford, Falcon Edge Capital and Chinese taxi hailing app Didi Kuaidi to fund its expansion.
The funding effectively raises Ola’s valuation to $5 billion dollars from the earlier $3.5 billion.
With the latest round of infusion, Ola has raised over $ 1.3 billion from global investors to expand its business even as rival Uber becomes increasingly aggressive in India.
“As we pursue our mission to build mobility for a billion people, we are excited about bringing on board 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, co-founder and chief executive, Ola said in a statement.
Ola claims to have over 350,000 vehicles on its platform across 102 cities. Uber, a late entrant in India has over 250,000 drivers on its network of 21 cities.
The company has grown by more than 30 times in the last one year, now clocking over 1 million booking requests a day. With over 350,000 vehicles registered on its platform, Ola continues to be the first choice for customers and driver-partners across 102 cities in India. The latest round of funding will be used towards fuelling growth across existing categories as well as in innovating mobility solutions for the local market.
Ola will also continue to focus on building and nurturing the ecosystem for its driver-entrepreneurs and to enable more drivers to grow as entrepreneurs themselves, in the time to come, the company said in a statement.