The war between Ola and Uber is getting more and more intense with every passing day and soon it may even spill beyond the streets of India. Didi Kuaidi, China’s biggest Taxi aggregator app backed by Alibaba is planning to invest in homegrown Ola, a move that could threaten Uber’s cash rich position.
Ola, formerly Olacabs, is finalizing the second tranche of $200 million of its $500 million financing round led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Didi Kuaidi, and Baillie Gifford, a Scottish investment firm which is a shareholder in Flipkart, valuing the Indian cab-hailing app at $5 billion.
Ola is attracting many investors around the globe in this round of funding. GIC is expected to pump £100 million this year while Didi may invest £30 million. Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global is also likely to participate in the latest round. Ny hedge fund Falcon Edge, Softbank Corp and Tiger Global also putting £300 million into Ola.
Ola and Uber are facing regulatory hurdles but the competition is so fierce that they both are still rolling out new services. Exponential growth in smart phone usage is the main reason behind all this in India, the 3rd biggest Economy of Asia. Ola claimed to be doing 750,000 rides a day and just started its operations in Mumbai. On the other side Uber aims to touch 1 million rides per day in a period of 9 months.
Didi Kuaidi is valued at $16 billion and is Uber’s biggest competitor worldwide, having raised $4.4 billion in investor money. The Chinese taxi app has been aligning all of Uber’s rivals to fight the startup which is spread across 300 cities globally. India’s Taxi market is estimated over £10 billion but still unorganised. But situation is changing because of these aggregator services.