Ride hailing app Ola saw its losses widening to Rs 4,897.8 crore, even though its total income grew 70 per cent during FY2016-17 as compared to the previous fiscal, as per regulatory documents. Ola, which is locked in a bruising battle for market leadership in the Indian market against American rival Uber, had registered a loss of Rs 3,147.9 crore in FY2015-16.

During the same period, ANI Technologies - the entity running Ola - saw its consolidated total income rising over 70 per cent to Rs 1,380.7 crore as against Rs 810.7 crore in FY2015-16, as per documents filed with Registrar of Companies (RoC). Emails sent to Ola did not elicit a response.

“A one-time loss of about Rs 1,000 crore makes the results look worse than they would be on an ongoing basis. In line with results from e-commerce firms, advertising expenses shrunk by 35 per cent,” Anchal Agarwal, co-founder of research firm Tofler, said.

As per the documents, sourced by Tofler, Ola incurred a one-time loss on account of “modification of financial instrument” to the tune of Rs 1,095.3 crore in FY17. The company also saw its employee-related expenses growing about 24 per cent to Rs 572.1 crore, while finance costs escalated to Rs 28.7 crore in FY17.

Ola’s subsidiaries and include Ola Fleet Technologies (leasing business), Zipcash Card Service (payments), Ola Electric Mobility and Ola Skilling.

Founded in 2011 by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Ola offers services in more than 110 cities and claims to have over 10 lakh driver-partners across cabs, auto-rickshaws, and taxis on its platform. Earlier this year, it forayed into the Australian market and now offers services in cities including Perth, Sydney and Melbourne. There too, the company competes with Uber.

Interestingly, both the companies have SoftBank as a common investor. The two rivals also compete in the food delivery space in India. Last year, Ola acquired Foodpanda in December 2017 to take on UberEATS in the Indian market.

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