- General
- July 23, 2018
- 4 minutes read
Indian ride-hailing Unicorn Ola Cabs aims for an IPO in 3 years time
image credit : Ola Cabs Indian ride-hailing Unicorn Ola Cabs is preparing and plans to go public in as soon…
image credit : Ola Cabs
Indian ride-hailing Unicorn Ola Cabs is preparing and plans to go public in as soon as 3 years from now according to its co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal stating at a recent event held in the Indian city of Bengaluru where he spoke to an audience.
Ola Cabs recently just hit operational profitability and is stated by its CEO Aggarwal to have beaten Uber in the Indian region, both of this which stand as positive metrics for a planned IPO of the ride-hailing firm which has raised well over $2 Billion since its start counting Softbank, Tencent and DST Global as major investors and was valued at $7 Billion in its most previous funding round co-led by Softbank and Chinese internet giant Tencent.
Ola Cabs has faced heavy competition from Uber in the Indian region and has fought to lead the ride-hailing space there and although its CEO states of Ola beating Uber in the region, There aren’t clear metrics to measure which service surpasses the other as both Ola and Uber remain widely used in the region.
Stating at the recently held event, Aggarwal said “The ambition for me and (co-founder) Ankit Bhati has always been to build a sustainable, long-term, independent business. And, in that direction, we are definitely going to IPO. Our goal is to aim for an IPOin the next three-four years,”.
With Uber being pioneer in the ride-hailing market, It’s seen global competition from several other startups including Didi Chuxing, Grab, Go-Jek and Ola which have popped up in several regions to challenge its dominance and has even combined its operations with rivals in some markets as in the case of Didi and Grab with the company taking equity in both startups merging its operations together due to heavy competition.
As Ola has boosted its operations, It’s IPO will also likely benefit several driver-partners in addition to its investors, employees and founders alike, Several Ola employees just recently sold $30 million worth of stock in the company to Singaporean investor Temasek at a discounted valuation of $2.5 -$3 Billion with the company also reportedly in talks with Temasek which might see the sovereign wealth fund take a larger stake in the 8 year old startup.
