What is Ola? Ola Review

Ola Basic Introduction

Ola is already present in 110 cities in India and claims to have over 125 million users in the country. The team claims to have over 1 million driver-partners in India and is said to provide up to 1 billion rides a year through its platform.

Ola License

In 2019, Ola also obtained a non-banking financial company license issued by the Reserve Bank of India, the central bank of India, to further expand its digital lending services.

Ola's financing

In September 2015, Ola received US$500 million in Series F funding, led by Falcon Edge Capital. Other investors included ABG Capital, Dan Neary, FII LTR Focus Fund, JSCapital, Parkwood Bespin, SoftBank Telecom Corp, Steadview Capital, and Tiger Global Management.

In April 2017, Ola completed a financing of US$250 million from SoftBank Group.

In May 2017, Ola raised another $104.4 million in private equity funding from investors including Falcon Edge Capital and Ratan Tata’s RNT Capital Advisers. The subscription price was 13,521 Indian rupees.

In June 2017, Ola completed another $50 million in financing from Tekne Capital, a hedge fund from New York, USA.

In October 2017, Indian taxi company Ola received a new round of financing of US$2 billion from investors including SoftBank Group and Tencent. This means that Ola will have more funds to compete with its biggest competitor Uber in the Indian market.

In May 2018, Ola also received a $50 million venture capital investment from Chinese investors, namely China-Eurasian Economic Co-operation Fund and Sailing Capital. So far, the company has publicly disclosed a total financing amount of more than $3.4 billion.

In August 2018, it received US$225 million in investment from Singapore's sovereign investment fund Temasek in the secondary market.

In September 2018, it received US$50 million in venture capital from the China Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund and Sailing Capital.

In January 2019, it completed a financing of 141 million Indian rupees (approximately 2 million US dollars) from Eternal Yield International, an electric vehicle and scooter manufacturer headquartered in Jinhua, Zhejiang, China.

In February 2019, Ola announced the completion of a $16 million J+ round of financing. A total of nine investment institutions participated in this round of financing, namely J3T Ventures, HBM Investment, Petite Pond, Omar O Raucci, Lyon Assets Inc, Steven Price and Tina Price, and THC Ventures 12. Ola revealed that it will use this latest financing to expand some non-core businesses, such as food technology, scooter rental, drug and grocery delivery, and digital lending.

Ola's History

Ola was founded in 2010.

In 2012, it launched its mobile app.

In 2016, Ola launched its own connected car platform, Ola Play.

In fiscal year 2016, Ola’s loss reached 23.117 billion Indian rupees, while in fiscal year 2015, its loss was only 89.97 billion Indian rupees.

In September 2018, it started operations in the UK and is developing emerging markets in Australia.

In December 2018, Ola invested $100 million in Bengaluru electric scooter startup Vogo and achieved seamless service integration with it. Consumers can search for available Vogo scooters and electric vehicles nearby while calling a taxi, and use them directly after the taxi is completed, which is very convenient.