OLA, the online cab aggregator has today announced that it has raised $500 million in Series F round from Baillie Gifford, Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group, DST Global and China’s Didi Kuaidi. It will use the funds for growth related activities and mobility solutions. This round of funding takes Ola’s total external funding to over $1.3 billion, of which $1.2 billion has been raised over the last year.
Though OLA did not provide any financial details but people familiar to the round said that the company is valued at $5 Bn. The Bangalore-based group has effectively doubled in value since raising $400m at a roughly $2.4bn valuation last year.
Bhavish Aggarwal, OLA co-founder, said the new fundraising would help the company “pursue our mission to build mobility for 1bn people” by rolling out new products, including a new carpooling service and a vehicle funding scheme for its drivers.
OLA was founded in January 2011 by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, graduates from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.
Currently the company has 350,000 registered vehicles on its platform, up from 250,000 in August, which includes both cabs and auto rickshaws. Ola claims that its average ETA for cab arrival has dropped to 5 minutes, while vehicles from Mini and Auto are available within 2 minutes in most cities.
In September this year, Uber’s rival in China, Didi Kuadi, had invested in Ola’s $225 million round of funding. Didi also invested $100 million into Uber’s biggest US competitor, Lyft. And it also participated in a $350 million round of funding for GrabTaxi, a rival in Southeast Asia.
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