Ola Electric Mobility, the Electric Vehicle (EV) unit of ANI Technologies that owns the home-grown cab-hailing firm Ola, has raised close to Rs 292 crore (~ US$41 million) from global investment firms Tiger Global Management, Matrix Partners, and Sarin Family India LLC (family office of ex-Vodafone chief executive officer Arun Sarin), according to regulatory filing by the company sourced through the data and business intelligence platform Paper.vc.
Notably, this is the first time Ola Electric Mobility has raised external funding as an independent unit of Ola.
The board of director of Ola Electric Mobility has issued and allotted “1993 Series A compulsory convertible preference shares of face value of Rs 10 each of the company, at an issue price of Rs 14,61,523,” to the above investors, said the filing documents.
Tiger Global, Matrix, and Sarin are already investors in Ola, the parent company. Tiger Global is an early investor in Ola as it invested $10 million in cab-hailing firm in 2009 when Ola raised the Series A round, followed by Matrix Partners.
Incorporated as an independent entity in February 2017, with the aim of providing services across EV value chain, Ola Electric Mobility will raise a total of Rs 400 crore (~ US$56.5 million) in this round, which will be led by the same set of investors.
Last year Bhavish Agarwal, Co-Founder of Ola, announced its commitment to bring 1 million EVs on Indian roads by 2021. According to its "Mission- Electric" plan unveiled last year, the company had announced plan to place 10,000 e-rickshaws and e-autorickshaws in its service within a year’s time.
Recently, in December, Ola had invested $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.
In May 2017, Ola launched Ola Electric in Nagpur, which was India’s first multi-modal electric platform that includes electric autos, cars, and buses. Ola and Mahindra had partnered with the Government of India in a first-of- its-kind programme to build an electric mass mobility ecosystem in Nagpur.
In April 2016, Pune-based Electric bike startup Tork Motorcycles had raised an undisclosed amount from a host of marquee investors including Ola founders Bhavish Agarwal and Ankit Bhati.
Via ~ Business Standard