Cab-hailing firm Ola has raised $400 million (Rs 2,620 crore) from Chinese internet giant Tencent as part of its latest funding round.
The company raised the funding from Singapore-based Copper Technology Pte Ltd, an associate entity of Tencent, by allocating 1,908,143 preferential shares at Rs 13,521 apiece, filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) revealed.
An email query sent to Tencent did not elicit a response.
Copper Technology will get a 9.75% stake for its investment in Ola which puts the cab-hailing firm’s valuation at $4.1 billion, a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates. Recent media report put the firm’s valuation at $3.8 billion.
The variation in valuation is probably due to the staggered funding round, that started from November last year with Softbank’s $250 million infusion, subsequently followed by a $104.4 million infusion from Falcon Edge Capital and UC-RNT and a $36 million infusion from Tekne Capital Management.
While the funding from Softbank was raised at a share subscription price of Rs 12, 905 apiece, the subsequent rounds were raised at Rs 13,521 apiece.
Altogether, Ola has raised around $800 million since November last year, as part of the latest funding report. The latest round also takes the total funding raised by Ola to date to $1.93 billion.
Ola has been raising funds at regular intervals in recent times. The frenetic pace of fundraising also comes amidst reports of Softbank trying to close a $10 billion investment into its global rival Uber. Softbank is currently the largest shareholder in Ola with an estimated 22.5% stake.
Industry analysts say Ola is expected to continue its fundraising efforts to keep competition at bay. “While Ola should not have any problems raising more funds, there could, at some future point, arise a situation where Softbank pushes for a possible consolidation and manages to extract a deal where both Ola and Uber work together,†said Satish Meena, senior forecast analyst at research firm Forrester.
