According to reports from Mint, cab aggregator Ola, who count in its investors list big names like Didi Chuxing and SoftBank Group, is in initial talks with investors to raise a new round of funding. Didi Chuxing has also raised a heavy round of $1 billion in May from iPhone maker Apple Inc, followed by a fresh round of $600 million from a Chinese insurance company this week.
Sources, according to reports, say that the homegrown ‘Unicorn’ wants to raise $300-400 million. The huge funding aspiration comes as no surprise as Ola is competing with Uber, which has become world’s most valuable startup after raising a mammoth $3.5 billion funding from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, valuing the company at $62.5 billion. The San Francisco-based company claims to have 40 percent of market share in India.
Ola, however, might have to lower its fund expectations owing to the investors’ appetite. The company at present is talking to both existing and new investors including names.
Last November Ola had raised a fresh round of $500 million in funding from Baillie Gifford, China’s largest taxi-hailing service company Didi Chuxing and existing investors Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group and DST Global. Though it has $1.2 billion in investment till now, it still seems less in competing with Uber.
The funding process would be similar to its last fundraising, where the company initially may receive capital from existing investors and then close the round by adding newer investors to top up the cash.
Focusing more on its core business now, Ola has shut Ola Cafe and Ola Store, its food and grocery delivery services. It has also introduced ‘Micro’ a few months back in March, to deal with Uber’s competitive pricing.
According to reports that circulated in September, Ola was doing 750,000 rides a day across 100 cities. Uber claims to have 150,000 drivers on its network and was doing more than a million rides daily.
