Cab-hailing firm Ola, operated by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd, has raised Rs 670 crore ($104.4 million) in a fresh round of funding from Falcon Edge Capital and Ratan Tata’s RNT Capital Advisers.
US hedge fund Falcon Edge invested Rs 402 crore while UC-RNT Fund, a joint venture between Tata and University of California Investments, put in Rs 267.9 crore, according to Ola’s filings with the Registrar of Companies.
The development comes after Ola last month received board approval to raise about $100 million.
Ola issued 4.95 lakh shares at Rs 13,521 apiece. That’s higher than the Rs 12,905 price at which it recently allotted shares to existing Japanese investor SoftBank Group Corp to raise Rs 1,675 crore.
Ola’s current valuation couldn’t be ascertained. In August 2015, it was valued at $4.8 billion. However, media reports in February pegged its valuation around $3.5 billion.
E-mail queries sent to Ola in this regard did not elicit a response by the time of filing this report.
The latest funding round takes the total Ola has raised so far to $1.5 billion.
Founded by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati in 2010, Ola has previously raised funding from marquee investors such as SoftBank, Tiger Global and Matrix Partners.
The company had raised $500 million in a Series F round from Scottish investment firm Baillie Gifford, China’s Didi Chuxing and other investors in November 2015; $400 million in a Series E round led by DST Global in April 2015; and $210 million in its Series D round led by SoftBank in October 2014.
Ola has been burning a huge amount of cash to woo customers and gain market share in its bid to stave off competition from its San-Francisco-based rival Uber Technologies Inc.
Ola reported a three-fold rise in consolidated net loss to Rs 2,311.7 crore for 2015-16, as total expenditure surged to Rs 3,078.19 crore from Rs 899.7 crore. Its operating revenue jumped to Rs 438.6 crore from Rs 57.5 crore.
Ola also recently disclosed the financials of its cab leasing arm, Ola Fleet Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which posted a loss of Rs 13.3 crore for 2015-16, compared with a profit of Rs 3.9 crore the previous year.
