Ola raises $500 million in Series F

Ola, India’s most popular mobile app for personal transportation today announced that it has closed $500 million in its Series F funding round. Baillie Gifford, Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group, DST Global and Didi Kuaidi participated in this 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 has grown by over 30 times in the last one year, now clocking over 1 million booking requests a day. With over 350,000 vehicles registered on its platform, Ola continues to be the first choice for customers and driver-partners across 102 cities in India. 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. Ola will also continue to focus on building and nurturing the ecosystem for its driver-entrepreneurs and to enable more drivers to grow as entrepreneurs themselves, in the time to come.

Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder & CEO, Ola said, “As we pursue our mission to build mobility for a billion people, we are excited about bringing onboard partners who can help us get there faster. We will continue to build for the local market through innovative solutions like Ola Share, Ola Prime and Ola Money, as we grow the mobile ecosystem in India.”

Ola’s mobile apps, accounted for a presence in smartphones of 78% cab users in India according to recent mobile intelligence reports. Ola has introduced a wide range of personal transportation options to serve millions of customers across the country, even in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. This includes Kaali-Peeli taxis in Mumbai, Auto-rickshaws in 6 cities, Yellow Taxis in Kolkata and Ola Share (beta) in Bangalore, a first of its kind social ride-sharing option for users within their groups of choice. ETAs on the Ola app across categories have reduced to an average of 5 minutes across cities, with categories like Mini and Auto consistently being available within 2 minutes in most cities.

Past Funding:
With the current round, Ola has closed over $1.3 bn of external funding, of which over $1.2 bn has been raised over the past year. In April 2015, Ola raised $400 mn of funding led by DST Global in Series E and prior to that, $210 mn 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 amongst its existing investors.