Ola is considered the biggest ride-hailing company in India, which competes directly against Uber. And Ola has just raised $50 million in funding at a $4.3 billion valuation. The funding was provided by Hong Kong-based private equity company Sailing Capital and the state-backed the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund (CEECF).
According to Livemint, this round of funding will give Sailing and CEECF a combined stake of more than 1% in Ola. Ola previously raised $1.1 billion in October from Tencent and SoftBank. And Ola is planning to raise $1 billion more from other investors to bring the total for this round to $2.1 billion.
Singapore-based Temasek is expected to be one of the participants in that fund raise. Rumor has it that Temasek already bought secondary shares in Ola already. Temasek is believed to have already purchased shares worth at least $30 million from early and former employees at Ola.
After the $2.1 billion is raised, the company is expected to have a post-money valuation of $7 billion. The valuation was disclosed in regulatory documents filed by Ola with the ministry of corporate affairs, which was discovered by intelligence platform Paper.vc.
This makes Ola the second most valuable Internet startup behind digital wallet company Paytm.
Ola plans to aggressively expand within India and outside of the country. Plus Ola started pursuing food delivery last year after acquiring Foodpanda’s operations. Along with the acquisition of Foodpanda’s operations in India, Ola said it was going to invest $200 million into its food delivery business . This is actually Ola’s second attempt at food delivery.
Ola also acquired a public transportation ticketing company called Ridlr shortly after. That deal was made all in stock.
