Ola ups its authorised capital to raise another $300 Mn round

In its pursuit of a billion dollar funding round, Ola has ramped up its authorised share capital to be able to raise another $300 million.

One round worth a similar amount, Ola had already raised about one and half month ago from Hyundai and Kia Motors in a strategic partnership. This was mostly to ante Ola’s mobility solution functions in India with customised electric vehicles and infrastructure provided for by Hyundai.

Ola’s electric mobility arm itself had independently scored a Rs 400 crore funding from Matrix Partners and Tiger Global a couple of months ago.

Now, the company has added Series J Preference Shares to its capital to carry on the current $1 billion equity round that is being raised at a $6 billion valuation.

Sachin Bansal, a co-founder of Flipkart and an existing backer who has already poured in $21 million of the promised $100 million in the company, is slated to participate in the new tranche along with two other auto majors, reports ET.

The upcoming tranche is slated to take place via the sale of 11,62,259 Series J CCPS priced at Rs 21,250 each.

With this, SoftBank’s shareholding, a key concern of Ola founders is also expected to go down to 23.37%. Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal are also slightly increasing their combined shareholdings to 10.88%.

In fact, after making around Rs 100 crore in secondary share sales in the ongoing round, both Ankit Bhati and Bhavish Aggarwal have purchased fresh equity shares worth Rs 10 each to marginally ramp up their respective stakes.

Bhati invested a minor of 10.08 lakhs via 1,00,812 shares, and Aggarwal Rs 22.16 lakhs via 2,21,575 shares.

To further diversify the investor group, Ola has been in talks with investors based in US such as Chairman of Transmarket Group, Raymond S Cahnman; Tina and Steven Price from J3T Ventures and Lyon Assets.