JOIN USTaxi aggregator Ola has closed $500 million funding from various investors including Softbank, Didi Kuaidi and Tiger Global.
Baillie Gifford, Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group, DST Global and Didi Kuaidi participated in the Series F funding round. Ola will use these funds to further accelerate its growth in the Indian market with a focus on building mobility for a billion people, the company said.
With the current round, Ola has closed over $1.3 billion of external funding, of which over $1.2 billion was been raised over the past year. In April 2015, Ola raised $400 million led by DST Global in Series E and prior to that $210 million, led by SoftBank Group as part of its Series D round in October 2014. Ola counts Tiger Global, Matrix Partners, Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Accel Partners US, and Falcon Edge also among its existing investors.
Ola, founded in January 2011, by IIT Bombay alumni Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, has grown by over 30 times in the last one year, now clocking over one million booking requests a day.
It had recently acquired TaxiForSure, India’s second largest cab aggregator, which continues to operate as an independent brand. The latest round of funding will be used towards fuelling growth across existing categories as well as in innovating mobility solutions for the local market.