Ola has raised a fresh round of $500 million in Series F funding from a group of new and existing investors, including Didi Kuaidi, Baillie Gifford, Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global, SoftBank Group, and DST Global.
With this round of funding, the taxi booking app has closed over $1.3 billion of external funding, of which over $1.2 billion has been raised over the past year.
In April 2015, Ola raised $400 million of funding led by DST Global in Series E and $210 million led by SoftBank Group as part of its Series D round in October 2014. Matrix Partners, Steadview Capital, Sequoia India, Accel Partners US, and Falcon Edge are also its existing investors.
Ola will use these funds to accelerate its growth in the Indian taxi market with a focus on building mobility for a billion people and also focus on providing solutions for the local market.
Despite opposition from local taxi operators and competition from US rival Uber, Ola has grown by over 30 times in the last one year and is clocking over one million booking requests a day.
Ola claims that it has more than 350,000 vehicles registered on its platform. Ola has presence in 102 cities including small towns in India.
“We will continue to build for the local market through innovative solutions like Ola Share, Ola Prime and Ola Money, as we grow the mobile ecosystem in India,” said Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO, Ola.
Ola’s mobile apps is available on the smartphones of 78 percent cab users in India according to recent mobile intelligence reports.
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