Falcon Edge leads $225m round for India's Ola
Indian ride-hailing service Ola has raised $225 million in funding led by existing investor Falcon Edge Capital, in the opening tranche of a planned $500 million round.
Previous Ola investors Tiger Global and SoftBank Corp. also participated in the round, along with six other investors, according to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies. The latest funding brings the total raised by Ola to nearly $900 million, and is reported to value the company at $5 billion.
This latest investment comes just months after Ola closed its Series E round, led by DST Global, at $400 million. Falcon Edge and Tiger Global also participated in that round.
Ola's fundraising comes at the same time as its announcement of a $75 million investment into a new car-leasing program, which is expected to add 100,000 drivers to its platform by the end of next year. Ola will lease the vehicles to drivers for a monthly fee, and allow them to buy the cars outright after three years. The company plans to raise $675 million for the new program, separate from its own capital-raising plans.
US-based Uber, Ola's main competitor, is working on a similar car leasing program, and is reportedly planning to announce it within the week. Uber recently received an undisclosed amount of funding from Tata Capital.
Uber has been moving aggressively across Asia, having also raised $1.2 billion for its China unit this month. The company's CEO Travis Kalanick said at the time that Chinese search engine Baidu was among the participants in the funding round.
Falcon Edge, a US-based hedge fund, has shown increasing interest in India's technology sector over the last year. In addition to its investment in Ola this April, the firm also backed mobile payment system developer Mswipe in July, and property listing site Housing.com last December.
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