Ola raises ₹150 cr from Sachin Bansal

NEW DELHI: Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal has pumped in about ₹150 crore in ride-hailing platform Ola, according to documents filed with the corporate affairs ministry.

“... 70,588 fully and compulsorily convertible, cumulative ‘Series J’ Preference Shares’ having face value of ₹10 having the rights, privileges and preferences... is hereby allotted at a subscription price of ₹21,250,” the documents showed.

This translates into an investment of about ₹150 crore by Bansal, who left Flipkart after the US retail giant Walmart picked up 77% stake in the e-commerce company for $16 billion.

The resolution was passed at a board meeting of ANI Technologies, the entity that runs Ola, on January 12, according to the doc- uments.

E-mails sent to Ola and Bansal did not elicit any response.

According to people familiar with the matter, Bansal is pumping in ₹650 crore in total and the ₹150 crore funding is part of the total investment.

The allotment of these shares to Bansal is part of Ola’s plans to raise about $1 billion in funding, they added.

In October last year, the Bengaluru-based company had announced raising $1.1 billion funding from China’s Tencent Holdings and Softbank Group. It had also stated that it was in “advanced talks” to close an additional $1 billion funding to take total mop-up to more than $2 billion.

Ola is locked in a battle for mar k e t leadership wi t h Us-based rival Uber in India and other markets like Australia, New Zealand and the UK.