Cab-hailing aggregator Ola, which is operated by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd, is looking to raise another $100 million (Rs 646 crore), according to the company’s filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
The Bengaluru-based company had sought the board’s approval in March to raise the amount from its existing investors. Subsequently, Ola’s board approved the fundraise.
The development comes after the company raised $250 million from SIMI Pacific Pte Ltd, a SoftBank Group Corp subsidiary, VCCircle reported last week.
Ola plans to raise the amount by selling 495,526 Series-I shares at Rs 13,531 apiece. This is higher than the Rs 12,905 price at which Ola sold its shares recently, indicating a 4.8% rise in its valuation.
According to the filing, the company said the fundraising exercise was meant to strengthen its financial position.
During its August 2015 fundraising round, Ola was valued at $4.8 billion. However, media reports had pegged its valuation at $3.5 billion when the company raised another $330 million from SoftBank in February.
Earlier this month, Mint had reported that Ola was looking to raise at least $500 million more. SoftBank had reportedly agreed to infuse more funds, subject to new investors coming on board.
Email queries to Ola did not elicit any response at the time of filing this report.
Founded by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati in 2010, Ola has so far raised a little over $1.4 billion from marquee investors such as Tiger Global and Matrix Partners.
In its bid to stave off competition from its San-Francisco-based rival Uber, the company has been burning a huge amount of cash to woo customers and gain market share.
Uber, on the other hand, has been very aggressive to capture a significant market share of the Indian urban transportation market, after it lost out to Didi Chuxing in China.
Ola’s revenue had risen seven times to Rs 380.2 crore in 2014-15 from Rs 49.6 crore in 2013-14. But its net losses had widened to Rs 754.8 crore from Rs 34.2 crore and its total expenditure had surged 14 times to Rs 1,173 crore. Its financials for 2015-16 are not available.
