Ratan Tata, Falcon invested ₹670 cr in Ola’s November funding round

BENGALURU: Ratan Tata’s RNT Capital Advisers and existing investor Falcon Edge Capital invested ₹670 crore in Ola in the November funding round in which the cab aggregator raised ₹1,675 crore from SoftBank Group Corp, according to regulatory filings.

Tata, chairman emeritus of Tata Sons Ltd, had invested an undisclosed amount in Ola, run by ANI Technologies Pvt Ltd, in his personal capacity in July 2015.

Documents filed with the Registrar of Companies and sourced from research firm Tofler show that Falcon Edge ploughed ₹402 crore into Ola and RNT Capital Advisers, a collaboration of Tata’s privately held investment firm RNT Associates Pvt Ltd and University of California, invested ₹268 crore. Fresh shares were issued to both Falcon Edge and RNT Capital at ₹13,511 apiece.

Ola issued shares to SoftBank at ₹12,895 apiece in November, regulatory filings show, which implies that the company’s valuation had risen by about 4.8% in the latest funding round.

Ola did not respond to an email seeking comments. Emails sent to RNT Capital and Falcon Edge on Wednesday evening remained unanswered as of press time.

The home-grown online taxi firm is in talks with new investors to get at least $300 million more.

Ola is locked in a bruising battle with the local unit of Uber Technologies Inc for dominance of India’s cab-hailing market.

As per documents sourced from Tofler, Ola posted revenue of ₹758.23 crore in 2015-16, compared with ₹103.8 crore in the previous year.

Its loss nearly tripled to ₹2,313.7 crore, from ₹796 crore in the same period.