Ola Ropes In Citigroup & Kotak Mahindra To Manage Its $1 Bn IPO

Bhavesh Aggarwal-led Ola has selected banks including Citigroup Inc and Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd to manage its initial public offering. The ride hailing company has also hired investment bank Morgan Stanley for its speculated $1 Bn IPO. 

As per a Bloomberg report, Ola will be seeking a valuation of more than $8 Bn in the IPO and is likely to file its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the market regulator – SEBI. However, details regarding Ola’s IPO are not concrete yet and might change as we move close to October. It is expected that more banks will be chipping in for Ola’s IPO. 

Aggarwal in a recent TV interview had said that Ola and Ola Electric – the electric two wheel manufacturing arm of Ola, will go public eventually. Agarwal had said that Ola will be going public ahead of Ola Electric as it is a more mature business. He said that Ola will list on the stock exchange by next year, but did not hand out a specific timeline. 

With this, Ola will now join the bandwagon of Indian tech companies that are gearing up to go public such as Byju Raveendran led BYJU’s, Walmart owned Indian ecommerce platform Flipkart, and Ritesh Aggarwal led major hospitality chain OYO. Vijay Shekhar Sharma led Paytm, digital transaction platform MobiKwik, Online travel platform ixigo, fashion ecommerce platform Nykaa and others have filed their DRHPS and will test their fate in the public market soon. Deepinder Goyal-led Zomato and online car classified platform CarTrade have already gone public this year. 

Founded by Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, Ola operates in more than 250 cities across India, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Initially Ola  launched its operations with cabs and later launched its call-an-auto service in Bangalore and Delhi in 2015. The company later further went to launch Ola bikes taxis to compete against Bengaluru-based Rapido. The company last year even launched its electric rickshaw in the UK. 

Ola earlier last month announced raising $500 Mn from Singapore government’s investment fund Temasek and Plum Wood Investments Ltd. Temasek became an investor in Ola after it raised $225 mn in 2018. Ola is currently backed by Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank, Tiger Global, DST Global, Falcon Edge Capital, Hyundai Motors, and others. As per Crunchbase, the startup has raised a total of $4.3 Bn  through funding. To date, Ola has acquired Ridlr, Qarth, Geotagg, Taxiforsure, and FoodPanda. Ola also acquihired Pikup.ai, an Bengaluru-based AI based startup in 2019.

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