Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal invests $21 million in Ola, commits total investment of $100 million

Sachin Bansal, the co-founder of India’s leading e-commerce marketplace Flipkart, has invested $21 million in Ola — the leading ride-hailing service provider in India, reveals documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).

According to the reports, Sachin Bansal is planning to invest $93 million in Ola and this investment of $21 million is a part of that and rest of the money will come in tranches. For his investment, Sachin Bansal has so far received 70,588 preference shares at a subscription price of Rs 21,240 per share.

The investment from Sachin Bansal is a part of the company’s on-going Series J funding round. In this round, the Bengaluru-based company has already raised $74 million from existing investor Steadview Capital, valuing the company at $6 billion.

While Sachin Bansal has already registered a new venture capital firm BAC Acquisitions along with his friend and former investment banker Ankit Agarwal, the investment in Ola is made in his personal capacity.

In October last year, Ola announced a fund-raise of $1.1 billion from China’s Tencent Holdings and existing investor SoftBank Group. The company had also said that it is in talks to raise another $1 billion. The on-going fundraising activity seems to be a part of that $1 billion round.

The investment of $21 million in Ola is likely to be the biggest for Sachin Bansal so far, who has already invested in about nine early-stage startups, including Ather Energy and Unacademy, among others.

Ola is raising a new funding round using which it aims to double down on its efforts on international expansion and boost its food ordering platform Foodpanda which it acquired in December 2017. People aware of the development suggests that more money is expected to come in multiple tranches. As per the reports, a group of investors, including Singapore’s Temasek, SoftBank Group Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., Naspers, are likely to participate in this new funding round.

The ride-hailing startup has accelerated its international operations with the launch in the United Kingdom early last year. It has also entered the Australian and New Zealand markets.

Meanwhile, the cab aggregator market has witnessed a slowdown in growth over the last six months mainly because of a supply-led challenge as cab drivers across the country are demanding better earnings. Driver partner incentives have been plummeting as both Ola and Uber move towards the track to profitability.