Ola IPO | Business Upturn

Ola Electric IPO likely to open on August 2

Aditya Bhagchandani — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 11:41:36 +0000

Ola Electric, led by Bhavish Aggarwal, is preparing to launch its initial public offering (IPO) with the anchor book opening on August 1. The public subscription is expected to run from August 2 to August 6, with the listing potentially taking place on August 9.

The IPO aims to raise approximately $740 million through a mix of new shares and an offer for sale. Ola Electric is targeting a post-money valuation between $4 billion and $4.25 billion. This would mark the first Indian electric vehicle (EV) two-wheeler company to debut on the Dalal Street.

Ola Electric will use the proceeds from the IPO for capital expenditures, debt repayment, and research and development. The company competes with major players like TVS Motors, Bajaj Auto, and Ather Energy.

The draft red herring prospectus was filed with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on December 22, 2023. Key investment banks on the deal include Kotak Mahindra Capital, Goldman Sachs, and ICICI Securities. The law firm Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas is advising on legal matters.

Existing shareholders, including founder Bhavish Aggarwal and early investors, are set to sell a combined total of approximately 95.19 million shares in the offer for sale.

Ahead of IPO, Ola Cabs CFO Hemant Bakshi quits firm days after CEO’s exit

Adnan Nasir — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 12:03:52 +0000

Hemant Bakshi, CFO of Ola Cabs, has stepped down from his position barely four months after joining even as the firm is to undertake a restructuring exercise that will affect at least 10 per cent of the staff, as per the reports by Moneycontrol.

Bakshi, whose resignation from the ride hailing firm comes into effect immediately, had joined the company in January.

“With this restructuring, certain roles within the organization will be rendered redundant and could impact as much as 10 per cent of the workforce,” revealed a source to Moneycontrol.

Bakshi had joined the force to handle day-to-day operations.

The news of Bakshi’s resignment comes just a few weeks after Ola Cabs initiated preliminary discussions with investment banks for an IPO.

Ola Cabs has also made significant new appointments in the last one month including getting Kartik Gupta as the CFO and Sidharth Shakdher as the CBO.

The firm’s sister company, Ola Electric, has filed its draft red herring prospectus with the market regulator in December with aim of raising Rs 7,250 crores via IPO, which will mark the first attempt at public listing by an Indian electric vehicle firm.

According to a report from news agency Reuters, the cab service provider Ola Cabs is said to launch its Initial Public Offering (IPO) as soon as June-July. The report said that the Softbank-backed ride-hailing firm plans to raise $500 million at a valuation of nearly $5 billion.

Ola aims NBFC acquisition to broaden financial services business: Report

Himanshu Mishra — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 12:38:57 +0000

IPO-bound Ola is wishing to broaden its financial services business and also planning to receive an NBFC licence via the acquisition route, revealed sources to PTI.

Ola is asserted to be in conversations to buy at least 3 companies to expand its engineering, product, as well as loan management facilities to aid the rapid development in the financial services business, two sources close to the development, told PTI.

The firms being assessed for acquisition are registered non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), which deliver both secured and unsecured loans. Ola will pull the acquisitions to deliver vehicle financing as well as personal loans, said the sources. While the firm did not instantly offer any statements, sources announced Ola has lined up contentious expansion plans for its financial services business.

As per its RoC (Registrar of Companies) filing, Ola had lately capitalized ₹786 crore in its financial services business. Ola already delivers its Buy Now, Pay Later product – Ola Postpaid that is accessible to over 40 million customers and is propelled to rise to 100 million customers in the successive six months.

However, Ola is alternatively looking to earn insurance and insurance broking licences to further strengthen its capacity to extend innovative products like telematics-based pay-per-use motor vehicle insurance, sources declared. Ola has till date sold approximately 700 million policies and the GMV of its insurance business rose over 3x in 2021. It is now launching a Gross Written Premium of over ₹1,000 crore in 2022 and will expand numerous new offerings containing an insurance marketplace for gig economy workers beyond its driver-partners.

Ola, with more than 165 million customers, is one of the biggest consumer internet platforms in the nation and expanding with financial services and insurance to its services is a natural extension.

Ola selects Citigroup Inc, Kotak Mahindra Bank to manage Mumbai IPO: Report

News Desk — Mon, 30 Aug 2021 10:33:14 +0000

Banks including Citigroup Inc. and Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. are selected by Ride-hailing startup Ola to manage its Mumbai initial public offering that could raise about $1 billion, reported Bloomberg.

“The company, backed by SoftBank Group Corp. and Tiger Global Management, has also picked Morgan Stanley for the listing,” said the people, as quoted by Bloomberg. The name of people not be mentioned as the information provided is private.

One person said, “The Bangalore-based startup could seek a valuation of more than $8 billion in the IPO and could lodge a filing as soon as October”.

In the coming months, a strong pipeline of Indian startups that are ready to tap the IPO market would be joining by the 11-year-old Ola.

According to the Bloomberg News report for the first-time Paytm, the country’s leader in digital payments, Flipkart, the Indian e-commerce giant controlled by Walmart Inc., and digital education startup Byju’s are also preparing for their share sales.

Size and timeline could still change of Ola’s IPO as deliberations are ongoing and more banks could be added later, said the people.

No immediate response was given by representatives for Kotak Mahindra, Morgan Stanley and, Ola to requests for comment. Whereas a representative for Citi declined to comment.

Ola currently partners in India, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. With about 1.5 million drivers across 250 cities. In July the Uber Technologies Inc.’s rival raised $500 million from investors including Temasek Holdings Pte and an affiliate of Warburg Pincus.

IPO bound Ola raises $500 million from Temasek and Warburg

Bhomik Mathur — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 08:20:43 +0000

IPO bound ridesharing company Ola Cabs has raised about $500 million in the latest round of fundraising, with the participation of Temasek Holdings and the New York-based American private equity firm Warburg Pincus. Temasek Holdings is an investment fund owned by the Singapore government and has remained an investor in Ola Cabs since 2018.

The fundraising comes at a time when Ola’s business has been struggling due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has had an adverse effect on the mobility sector. The company’s valuation after the transaction was not revealed.

Ola’s founder Bhavish Aggarwal recently released a statement, saying, “Over the last 12 months we’ve made our ride-hailing business more robust, resilient and efficient”. He talked of utilizing the opportunity the ride-sharing company had in the urban mobility sector with people preferring private rides over public transportation due to health concerns. The company is also planning to go public, following a trend of various Indian tech. startups like Paytm and Zomato who are in the process of getting listed.

Meanwhile, the MD of Warburg Pincus, Vishal Mahadevia said that Warburg was excited to invest in Ola which he called one of the biggest consumer internet platforms in the country. “We look forward to collaborating with Bhavish and the team in the next phase of Ola’s growth,” he said on the fundraising.

Ola Cabs is also making a foray into the Electric Vehicles(EVs) sector and is planning to soon start the production of electric scooters. The company has created a separate entity called Ola Electric for its EV business. It is currently constructing a 500-acre two-wheeler production plant in Tamil Nadu.