Sachin Bansal hands a Rs 150-crore cheque to Ola as part of a larger funding round

BENGALURU: Flipkart cofounder Sachin Bansal has invested Rs 150 crore (about $21 million) in homegrown ride-hailing app Ola, the first tranche of an anticipated $100 million investment in the SoftBank-backed company.

According to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies and sourced from business signals platform paper.vc, the Bengaluru-headquartered company had allotted the former Flipkart CEO 70,588 shares at Rs 21,250 per share.

The latest investment continues to value Ola at $5.7 billion, the same valuation it commanded after existing investor Steadview Capital pumped in over Rs 520 crore into the company earlier this month, and is part of the Bhavish Aggarwal-led company’s ongoing $1-billion Series J capital-raising round.

ET was the first to report on September 18 that Bansal was in talks to invest in the company. His stakeholding in Ola currently stands at 0.37%. Bansal’s outsized bet on Ola has been touted as the largest personal investment in the Indian internet space, and dwarfs his previous investments — in the range of $1-2 million — in the Indian startup ecosystem. The 37-year-old had scooped up an estimated $1 billion after selling his entire 5.5% stake in Flipkart to Walmart.

OLA’S SEARCH FOR FRESH INVESTORS
Separately, Bansal and Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal had come together publicly to voice concerns over how domestic startups lacked a level playing field against their deep-pocketed global rivals. “What we need to do is tell the world we need your capital, but not your companies,” Bansal, addressing global companies, had told an audience in December 2016.

The two also teamed up to launch an industry grouping called IndiaTech.org to represent local Internet companies. Bansal however stepped down as a founding member of the group after Walmart acquired majority stake in Flipkart, while Ola continues to be a member of IndiaTech.org.

Ola has, in recent times, been keen to bring in fresh investors, including Temasek, the investment firm backed by the government of Singapore, as it looks to enter newer categories such as epharmacy. At present, Japanese business conglomerate Soft-Bank is the largest institutional stakeholder in the Indian cab aggregation company. SoftBank is also an investor in American ride-hailing firm Uber, which is Ola’s main rival in the Indian market.

India’s ride-hailing space has been witnessing a slowdown. ET had reported on September 24 that Ola and Uber, while increasing their absolute number of daily rides, saw growth decline to 20% on average in 2018 to 3.5 million rides across all segments, including taxis, autorickshaws, and shared cabs.

Ola saw its fiscal 2017 losses widening to Rs 4,897.8 crore, even though its total income grew 70% during this period. ANI Technologies — the entity running Ola — saw its consolidated total income rising over 70% to Rs 1,380.7 crore for the financial year ended 2016-17.