Ratan Tata’s personal investment spree continues. After investing in a personal capacity in start-ups like Snapdeal, PayTM and Xiaomi, he has now acquired a stake in one of India’s largest taxi aggregators Ola.
The announcement was made by Bhavish Agarwal, co-founder and CEO of Ola through company’s own blog. However, the company has not revealed the financials of the deal, including what percentage of stake has been acquired by the 76 year old Chairman Emeritus of Tata Group.
Honoured to have @RNTata2000 invest in @Olacabs mission to build mobility for billion Indians! http://t.co/ZIDJEa2cci pic.twitter.com/8mreQ0wTIM
— Bhavish Aggarwal (@bhash) July 1, 2015
After retiring from Tata Group in 2012, Ratan Tata has been serving as chairman emeritus of Tata Sons and has been investing in a number of startups lately. However, most of his investments have been in established names, who have already raised multiple rounds of funding. His investments include Snapdeal, Urban Ladder, Cardekho.com, Kaaryah. Recently, he invested in Paytm and Xiaomi.
Ola was founded in 2011 by Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal. It competes with Uber in India and claims to be biggest online cab service in the country. It has raised about $676.8 million in six funding rounds from 16 investors till date, including Tiger Global, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, Softbank, etc.
To become India’s biggest online cab booking service, Ola recently acquired its rival TaxiForSure in a cash and equity deal worth $200 million in March. The company claims that it has more than 2,00,000 drivers operating in over 100 cities of India.
Bhavish Agarwal, co-founder and CEO of Ola, said,
We are thrilled to share that Mr. Ratan Tata has recently invested in Ola, in his personal capacity. While I am personally very excited about this, as a company we can now learn from the rich experience of one of the finest business leaders of our times.
With Ola’s vision to impact mobility and transportation in India by creating a valuable citizen utility and a robust entrepreneurial ecosystem, we look forward to seeking inspiration and learning from this association.
The announcement also hold significance, considering Uber’s recent announcement of service expansion to 7 new Indian cities, making India its largest market outside the U.S.
