Ola raises $16 Mn in Series J round from new US-based investors

The second most valued Indian startup Ola has raised another $16 million in its ongoing Series J round.

The fresh funding round was participated by nine investors including J3T Ventures, HBM Investment, Petite Pond, Omar O Raucci, Lyon Assets Inc, Steven Price and Tina Price and THC Ventures 12.

According to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (ROC) accessed by data intelligence firm PaperVC, the parent of Ola (ANI Technologies) is allotting 53,024 preference shares having a face value of Rs 10 to the investors.

The fresh fund was raised at an estimated valuation of $6 billion.

The development comes within a month of Ola's raising $21 million from Flipkart founder Sachin Bansal and $74 million from existing investor Steadview Capital.

While $21 million is a part of larger $100 million round committed to Ola by Bansal, it also announced to raise over Rs 14 crore from the Chinese scooter making company Eternal Yield International. The Bengaluru-based company passed a resolution that it will issue 9,684 preference shares at the price of Rs 14,603 each.

The company has also been scouting for a bigger round but not from Softbank. The Bhavish Aggarwal-led company has decided to avoid the Japanese tech titan to safeguard co-founder’s voting rights.

Apart from overseas expansion, Ola has been experimenting with non-core business such as foodtech, scooter rental, medicine & grocery delivery, and lending.

Meanwhile, the cab-hailing giant has been cutting down investment in its food delivery business to focus only on private label cloud kitchens via foodpanda. On the other hand, it has extended its focus on scooter rental with $100 million commitment for Vogo and applied for NBFC licence to expand its lending offerings.

For grocery, it plans to leverage its food delivery subsidiary – foodpanda for fulfillment and is also in talks with Myra Medicines for medicine delivery.

For the financial year ending on March 31, 2018, Ola has reported a 60.98 per cent increase in the consolidated revenue to Rs 2,222.6 crore. During the same period, it also controlled its losses to Rs 2,842.2 crore from Rs 4,897.8 crore in the previous fiscal.