Ola, the ride sharing and rental vehicles provider firm, has raised half a billion led by the investment giants Temasek, and Warburg Pincus. This is one of the major funding raise event before Ola’s initial public offering(IPO).
$500 Miliion Funding Raise by Ola
Ola, the ride hailing giant, has concluded a new funding round recently let by the top investors Temasek and Warburg Pincus. Existing investors also actively participated to make it a $500 million funding event.
Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO and co-founder of Ola, has also shown interest in investing some undisclosed amount in his personal capacity.
Ola has raised over $4 billion in different financing events concluded to that. SoftBank, Tencent, Steadview Capital, Sailing Capital, and others are the major existing investors of Ola.
Talking about the last 13 months journey of Ola, CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said that the firm has made necessary changes in the Ola business model to make it more efficient, robust, and user friendly. The startup has also recorded good recovery post pandemic. The firm is in a stable position to provide better mobility services to its customers.
Ola IPO and Valuation Decline
Founded in 2010, the online ride service firm had been planning to start its initial public offering since 2019. To do that, it also completed all set up including pre-IPO trust in September 2019. The firm also started restructuring itself including laying off the employees, hiring more managerial level staffs, optimizing different departments and others.
As per Reuters report published in 2019, Ola had plans to start its IPO in March 2021. Covid pandemic disturbed all business activities globally and the riding services were the most affected due to national lockdown. It forced Ola to postpone the IPO plans.
During first two months of Covid-19 emergency, Ola’s operations was badly hit and it has no other option except firing 1400 staffs in May 2020. The company also reported that its revenue dropped by 95% during first wave of Covid-19.
Millions of Ola drivers lost their livelihood due to the sudden emergency due to the decline in transport operations.
Ola is also in the news due to its recent announcement of largest electric two wheeler factory establishment in Chennai, India worth Rs 2400 crore. Not only that, but Ola Electric also plans to install the World’s largest electric vehicles infrastructure in India. Both projects are on-going. The company will also export electric two wheelers to UK and other parts of Europe.
Ola valuation also saw a continuous decline since the beginning of Covid-19 emergency. As per Capital Quest report, there was a 45% define in its valuation from $6 billion to $3.3 billion from December 2019 to June 2020. The valuation was again slashed by 9% and it was valued $3 billion in March 2021.
