Vanguard marks down India's Ola

In its quarterly filing, Vanguard World Fund indicated that its 166,000 shares of Ola’s parent Ani Technologies were worth $182.74 each in November, representing a drop from the $311.27 per share reported by Vanguard Variable Insurance Funds in September. Both funds own common stock in Ani.

In the past year, several mutual funds have repeatedly cut their valuations of Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart. Most recently Fidelity cut Flipkart to $52.13 per share as of November 2016, falling in line with Morgan Stanley’s valuation of the company in September. Both funds have marked down Flipkart in four consecutive quarters.

Vanguard also holds a stake in Flipkart, but its latest filing indicates no change in the fund’s valuation of the company. The methods by which these mutual funds calculate their portfolio companies’ valuations is not known, but they are believed to rely on a mix of the companies’ financial information, market values of listed firms in the same industry, and the previous share price.

Last year Japanese conglomerate SoftBank indicated it had cut the value of its investment portfolio, which included holdings in Ola and online marketplace Snapdeal. SoftBank had led a $210 million Series D round for Ola in 2014 and later participated in follow-on rounds for the company.

Ola’s most recent investment was a $500 million Series F round in 2015 led by Baillie Gifford, with participation by Falcon Edge, Tiger Global Management, SoftBank, DST Global and Chinese counterpart Didi Kuaidi (now Didi Chuxing). At the time the company’s valuation was reported to be around $5 billion.

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• Topics
• South Asia
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• India
• TMT