Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Singapore-based Temasek Holdings has bought ₹206 crores ($30 million) worth shares from former and early employees of the cab-hailing startup Ola, it was part of a secondary share sale.

This secondary transaction has allowed for a large-scale Esop (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) encashment from former and early employees of the company. The share sale was completed in May-end and it has valued the company at around ₹17,212-₹20,654 crores ($2.5-3 billion).

Apart from this deal, Ola is also looking to raise funds from Temasek in a separate deal which is expected to be a combination of primary and secondary capital. In that other deal, Temasek is speculated to purchase nearly ($150-200 million) worth of secondary shares, opening opportunities of significant exits to some of Ola’s earliest investors.

Ola has come a long way in the last seven years and has expanded its footprints to over 110 cities in the country, with 10 lakh driver partners. Along with India, it is also expanding into the overseas market, already starting its operations in Australia. Ola has also acquired the online food delivery platform Foodpanda, trying to capture different domains, all the while giving a fierce competition to its rival, Uber.

Recently, Ola started moving towards profitability, making money on every ride. This will further its plan to launch an IPO.

Ola is the third most valuable internet startups in the country, only behind the e-commerce giant Flipkart, and India’s leading digital payment platform Paytm (One97 Communications Ltd).

In its last fundraising round, Ola had raised $1 billion, most of it coming from SoftBank and Tencent. Overall, Ola has raised $3.9 billion in 11 rounds from 20 investors, as of March 2018.

By Varun

Startups | Books | Ideas

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