Indian cab aggregator Ola has raised INR 670 crores in a fresh round of funding from the UC-RNT fund and Falcon Edge. While UC-RNT invested INR 267.7 crores in the company, Falcon Edge provided the bulk of the investment with 402 crores.
It should be remembered that the UC-RNT fund is a venture between the University of California and Ratan Tata, the patriarch of the $100 Billion+ Tata group. Falcon Edge on the other hand, is a Mauritius based hedge fund. The investments were revealed through a regulatory filing by Ola parent ANI Technologies.
The investments follow rumors from earlier in the month, in which it was said that the company was planing to raise $100 million from Falcon and Tata at a $3.5 Billion valuation. The company’s last fund raise, that saw it rake in $250 million from Softbank, held its value at $3 Billion. At its peak, Ola was valued at $5 Billion in November 2015.
The company has raised $1.5 Billion to date from a clutch of investors, including the likes of SoftBank Group, Tiger Global, Matrix Partners, Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Accel Partners US and Falcon Edge. The company is involved in a battle against Uber, which is seeking to dominate the rapidly growing Indian market. Ola has held the edge so far, with a stipulated 65 percent market share and a presence in over 110 cities.
However, it has yet to turn up with some real profits. The company generated losses of well over 2,300 cores in the year that ended in March 2016. That is almost 6 crores a day! So yeah, the company was burning money at that point in time. However, it was also recording a growth in its revenue and it will be interesting to see what kind of figures it comes up with now. The company is planning to make up for Uber’s superior funding via a slew of innovations like partnering up with the governments of various states and launching electric vehicles.
