Ola Electric raises $200 Mn at a valuation of $5 Bn

Ola Electric has raised $200 million in a new round from Tekne Private Ventures, Alpine Opportunity Fund, Edelweiss and others. With this, the company has mopped up $400 million in the past five months and its valuation soared to $5 billion.

Ola Electric had raised $200 million in a round led by Alpha Wave Global (formerly Falcon Edge), SoftBank and others at a valuation of $3 billion in September last year. According to the company, the latest round values it at $5 billion. 

With this, Ola Electric has joined the likes of Razorpay, Dream11, PharmEasy, Postman and Swiggy which attained $5 billion valuation mark in the past 12 months. Social commerce startup Meesho and industrial goods and services procurement platform OfBusiness are also valued at close to $5 billion whereas credit card payment app CRED is in talks to raise fresh funds at over $5.5 billion.

Over the past six months, Ola Electric has been focusing on accelerating the development of its electric scooter. However, the company is facing customers’ wrath over delay in delivery of its electric scooter Ola S1 and several glitches such as software and overheating of batteries around it.

Ola Electric, which also counts Tiger Global and Matrix as investors, had raised more than $50 million in a financing round led by Temasek which also saw participation from Edelweiss, IIFL, Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s VSS Investco and others in December.

Apart from traditional two-wheeler makers, Ola Electric counts Ather Energy as its primary competitor. The Tarun Mehta-led company had recently announced that it would raise around $57 million from Hero MotoCorp, the country’s largest two-wheeler maker.

According to Fintrackr’s data, around 33 startups in the electric vehicles space had raised funds in 2021. The list includes Tork Motors, Euler Motors, BluSmart, Zypp Electric and Ultraviolette among others.