Ola in talks with Microsoft for $200 million funding
Tania Halder Startup Oct 29, 2019, 9:29 pm
Ola is one of India's largest transportation network company that has recently reached the milestone of having over 200 million riders on its platform across India, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It had previously extended its market in Australia and New Zealand in September 2018 while it entered the European market with the UK in March 2019. The company is recently in talks to bag a $200 million funding from the tech- giant Microsoft.
According to the sources, the talk between the two companies is still advancing smoothly and most likely to be closed in the next 10-15 days. However, none of them made any official announcement regarding the funding. We still have to wait for any confirmation from the parties and need to watch out for any future activities that Ola is going to commence.
Previously, Ola had collaborated with Microsoft for a couple of times. Together with Microsoft, Ola built a new connected vehicle platform for car manufacturers worldwide in the year 2017. As it was reported by the sources, both companies will continue to deepen their partnership in the future too while collaborating in areas like cloud, emerging mobility technology, especially connected vehicles.
Ola is spreading its wings internationally and also has plans of setting up a research unit in the Bay Area of the US to focus on new areas like e-vehicles and connected cars.
Ola's rival ride-hailing company Uber which is a US-based company has already raised a fund of $3 billion. Therefore, in order to dominate the market, Ola had to do something to raise funding for the company. If the talk between Ola and Microsoft is successful,
Ola – which has about 200 million riders on its platform across India, UK, Australia, and New Zealand had recently announced setting up of a research unit in the Bay Area of the US to focus on new areas like e-vehicles and connected cars. The ride-hailing major, which is locked in a battle for market leadership with US-based Uber in India, has raised about $3 billion in funding. Its investors include Ratan Tata, SoftBank, Tencent Holdings, Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Motors, Sachin Bansal and others. The company, in September this year, had received Rs 35.8 crore in Series J round from ARK Ola Pre IPO Fund.
It had allotted 16,885 shares of Rs 10 each to the entity at a premium of Rs 21,240 apiece. Bengaluru-based Ola has been working on turning profitable as it plans to launch an IPO in the next few years. The company more than halved its losses to Rs 2,842.2 crore, while growing its revenue by 61 percent to Rs 2,222.6 crore in 2017-18 over the previous fiscal, as per regulatory documents. This month, Ola also announced the launch of its self-drive car-sharing platform, Ola Drive.
Ola, which currently claims to be having over 200 million subscribers, is looking to on-board over 20,000 cars by 2020. The team will also be investing $200 million for Ola Drive's expansion.
Via: YourStory NewsOla
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