Ola Raises $50M At Valuation Pegged At $3.7Bn-$4.3Bn; Sachin Bansal Explores Buying Stake

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Ola’s parent ANI Technologies is raising more money from new and existing investors as the ride-hailing app breaks into new markets and moves toward profitability. This is as per a report in the Economic Times.

The Uber rival has raised $50 million from two new Chinese investors – Sailing Capital and China Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund at a valuation pegged between $3.7-4.3 billion.

Source: Sailing Capital

China Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund is a Chinese state-backed fund that was set up with a mission for deepening economic cooperation between China and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation region. In September 2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the launch of CEF during the SCO Summit in Dushanbe (Tajikistan).

Source: en.china-eurasian-fund.com

The investments have been made through British Virgin Islands entities of the two Chinese funds – Auto Fortune Ltd and Odyssey Bravery Ltd, show regulatory documents filed with the registrar of companies and accessed by business intelligence firm Paper.vc.

The investment gives Sailing Capital and China Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund a stake of about 1.17% in ANI, the documents show.

Source: Zee News

Sachin Bansal, co-founder and former chief executive of online retailer Flipkart, is also believed to be exploring the acquisition of a stake in Ola, one of India’s most richly valued startups, through secondary transactions.

Bansal, often touted as one of the flagbearers of the Indian startup ecosystem, is reported to be thinking of raising a fund with a corpus of $700 million-$1 billion following Walmart’s $16 billion acquisition of Flipkart earlier this year, which earned him a $1 billion cash payout.

Financial documents filed with the registrar of companies and accessed from Paper.VC, peg the preliminary valuation at approximately $3.75 billion.

Additionally, alternative asset management firm Steadview Capital, helmed by Ravi Mehta, has been in discussions to invest capital directly in the Bengaluru-based company, while also looking to bump up its current shareholding in the firm through the secondary route, said people with knowledge of this.

Source: Linkedin

The firm had first invested in Ola in 2014 after it led a Rs 250 crore equity financing round, along with Sequoia Capital. According to Paper.vc, prior to the entry of Temasek, the government of Singapore-owned investment company, Steadview held a 1.35% stake in ANI.

The developments come less than two weeks after Ola’s founders Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati won the backing of Temasek, which agreed to vote with them as part of a recently structured secondary subscription of shares.

Source: Inventiva

Temasek’s role will give more power to Ola’s founders, who strengthened their rights last year, allowing them to veto any further stake purchases by largest shareholder SoftBank.

In May 2018, Ola co-founder and chief executive officer Bhavish Aggarwal had also been embroiled in a boardroom tussle with its largest investor, SoftBank, after he had blocked a proposed deal involving Tiger Global Management selling part of its stake to SoftBank.

Earlier this year, it was reported that Temasek was picking up a stake of about 5% in ANI for about $150-200 million with the Singapore sovereign wealth fund, which has assets under management of $225 billion, expected to invest further capital in the company through primary and secondary rounds, according to sources.

SoftBank, which has also emerged as the largest shareholder in Uber, holds a 26% stake while other major shareholders include venture capital firm Matrix Partners India with an 8.6% stake and Chinese Internet conglomerate Tencent with 10.4%.

The company has also begun venturing outside its home market. It announced an Australia entry in March and launched operations in the UK in August, both markets where Uber has already established itself.

The latest fund-raise from the two Chinese investment firms comes at a time when Ola is aggressively expanding outside and within India, while also building up a strong food-tech business to compete with Swiggy and Zomato, as the Bengaluru-based company looks to fortify its lead against arch-rival Uber Technologies in India. This is as per a report in the MINT.

It was reported in July 2018, that Ola has started making money on each cab ride – a major milestone – after taking into account expenses such as driver incentives and customer discounts. The company is targeting profitability by year-end.

 



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