Cab hailing firm Ola will invest $100 million in Vogo, a scooter rental startup based out of Bangalore, which will allow it to add Vogo fleet of two-wheelers to the Ola app to enable its users to rent the two-wheeled devices.

Vogo, which provides services in the southern Indian cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad, will use the money to expand its fleet by 100,000 scooters. It did not disclose how many scooters it currently has but said that more than 100,000 users have commuted for over 20 million kilometres using its two-wheelers.

“Our investment in Vogo will help build a smart multi-modal network for first-last mile connectivity in the country,” Ola co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Bhavish Aggarwal said in a media statement.

Notably, Ola was already an investor in Vogo prior to this investment as in August this year Vogo had raised an undisclosed Series A round from Ola, Matrix Partners and other investors, and now in this follow-on deal, Ola is doubling down its investment in Vogo.

Founded in 2016, by IIT-Bombay & IIM-Ahmedabad almni -- Anand Ayyadurai, B Padmanabhan and Sanchit Mittal, Vogo is a dockless scooter rental firm which lets customers rent scooters for short one way trips. The scooters have 'VOGO box' attached, which lets customers access the key without any human intervention and start riding.

Prior to Ola's investment, Vogo had raised a total of about $8 million in three rounds of funding from investors including Alteria Capital, Stellaris Venture Partners, Matrix India and individual investors like Pawan Munjal of HeroMotoCorp, Muthu Murugappan, Ajit Thomas and Vishesh Rajaram.

To recall, in May this year, Ola Co-founders, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, had together invested ₹45 lakh in Tork Motorcycles, a Pune-based electric vehicle (EV) making startup . Bhavish had invested nearly Rs 30 lakh while Bhati contributed about Rs 15 lakh, in lieu of shares.

Ola's investment in Tork was seen as an extension of the company's ambitious plans of putting a fleet of 10,000 EVs over the next 12 months and one million electric vehicles on its platform by 2021.
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