The Uber vs Ola war is about to get more intense, and maybe even spill beyond the streets of India. Didi Kuaidi, China's largest taxi-aggregator app, which is backed by Alibaba, the internet behemoth, is learnt to be investing in homegrown Ola, giving both players greater firepower to take on Uber.
Didi's investment in Bangalore-headquartered Ola comes close on the heels of it picking up stakes in San Francisco-based Lyft and Malaysia's GrabTaxi, signalling a global alliance against the cash-rich Uber.
People close to the development told TOI that Ola, formerly Olacabs, is finalising the second tranche of $200 million of its $500 million financing round led by GIC, Singapore's sovereign wealth fund, Didi Kuaidi, and Baillie Gifford, a Scottish investment firm which is a shareholder in Flipkart, valuing the Indian cab-hailing app at $5 billion.
GIC, which put a small amount when Ola scored $400 million led by DST Global earlier this year, is expected to pump as much as $100 million this time around while Didi may invest around $30 million. Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's DST Global is also likely to participate in the latest round, sources said. TOI had reported first, in its August 10 edition, about New York-based hedge fund Falcon Edge, Softbank Corp and Tiger Global putting the first chunk of $300 million into Ola.
Separate email queries sent by TOI regarding the financing round to Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder & CEO of Ola, Didi Kuaidi, GIC and Baillie Gifford did not elicit a response till the time of going to press.
"There's a lot of interest in this round and it may even get oversubscribed. As of now it's likely to close at $500 million. Things are still to be worked out fully," said a person privy to the matter. Even as Ola builds a bigger war chest, there have been talks of the Travis Kalanick-led Uber looking to raise $1 billion for India separately, just like it racked up $1.2 billion for China recently, two markets which are of enormous significance for the company. Uber, the most-valued tech startup worldwide at $51 billion also became the youngest privately-held company to cross the $50 billion valuation mark beating Facebook's record in July this year.
