Comments
Taxi booking app Ola has raised a fresh round of $500 milllion in Series F funding from a group of new and existing investors, including China's largest taxi hailing company Didi Kuaidi.
Baillie Gifford, Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group, and DST Global also participated in this round. This comes at a time when the company is facing serious opposition from local taxi operators and heightened competition from US rival Uber.
With this, Ola has closed over $1.3 billion of external funding, of which over $1.2 billion has been raised over the past year.
In April 2015, Ola raised $400 million of funding led by DST Global in Series E and prior to that, $210 million 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.
Ola will use these funds to further accelerate its growth in the Indian market with a focus on building mobility for a billion people and also focus on providing solutions for the local market.
In a statement the company said that Ola has grown by over 30 times in the last one year and is clocking over one million booking requests a day.
With over 350,000 vehicles registered on its platform, Ola has presence in 102 cities in India.
Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder & CEO, Ola said, “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.”
Ola’s mobile apps, accounted for a presence in smartphones of 78% cab users in India according to recent mobile intelligence reports, the company said.
Ola has introduced a wide range of personal transportation options to serve millions of customers across the country, even in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. This includes Kaali-Peeli taxis in Mumbai, auto-rickshaws in six cities, Yellow Taxis in Kolkata and Ola Share (beta) in Bangalore, a first of its kind social ride-sharing option for users within their groups of choice.
ETAs on the Ola app across categories have reduced to an average of five minutes across cities, with categories like Mini and Auto consistently being available within two minutes in most cities.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.