Tencent invests $400m in India's Ola

Tencent was allocated 1.91 million shares at INR13,521 apiece. This equates to a 9.75% stake in Ola, local media reported, citing filings with the Registrar of Companies.

The company raised INR6.7 billion ($102 million) in May from Falcon Edge Capital and RNT Capital Advisors, a VC fund backed by Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of the company that controls Tata Group. The investors were allocated shares at the same price as Tencent.

When SoftBank committed INR16.8 billion in November of last year, the valuation was said to be around $3.5 billion, although that was down from $5 billion as of its Series F round in 2015. SoftBank also indicated in November that it had marked down the part of its investment portfolio that includes holdings in Ola and Indian online marketplace Snapdeal.

Founded in 2010, the Ola platform offers taxis, luxury vehicles, auto-rickshaws and shuttle buses, and claims to have more than 600,000 vehicles at its disposal across 110 cities. Other investors in the company include Accel Partners, Tiger Global Management, Baillie Gifford, Steadview Capital, GIC Private, DST Global, and Chinese counterpart Didi Chuxing.

In 2015, Didi and Ola entered a strategic global partnership with Lyft and Grab, ride-hailing apps based in the US and Southeast Asia, respectively. The partnership allows the four companies to leverage each other’s technology, local market knowledge and business resources so that customers of one service can use the same app to order rides in other markets.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Expansion
• Technology
• India
• TMT
• Transportation
• Tencent