'The success of one or two IPOs does not dictate whether the upcoming IPOs will be successful or not, but it certainly indicates that the markets and investors are enthusiastic about startup IPOs.'
There's a hint of new competition riding into a sector that has attracted attention for being in a duopoly-like situation. Rapido, a commute app known for its budget-friendly bike-taxi services, on Tuesday announced its entry into the cab market, which is currently dominated by marquee brands Uber and Ola. Rapido's cab foray will be enabled by a software as a service (SaaS)-based platform.
Mobility company Ola's chief financial officer Swayam Saurabh and chief operating officer Gaurav Porwal are leaving the company. These developments come at a time when the SoftBank-backed company's core ride-hailing unit is planning to go public and for which it raised $500 million from Warburg Pincus and Temasek in July this year. These investment firms had partnered with the company founder Bhavish Aggarwal for this round.
Ola Electric on Thursday teased five new electric motorcycles that the SoftBank-backed company is working on, announcing the range after selling electric scooters. The products are labelled cafe racer, an adventure tourer, a scrambler and a naked motorcycle. The motorcycles are expected to be launched next year and would include premium and mass-market versions, said sources.
IPO-bound mobility platform Ola, said it has successfully raised $500 million via a Term Loan B (TLB) from marquee international institutional investors. This term loan has no impact on the valuation of Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola. The Bengaluru-based firm recently raised $139 million. This is part of a $1 billion funding round for which the company is in talks with investors, increasing its valuation to about $7.5 billion, according to the sources.
Creating an LLM trained on Indian languages is not easy. Experts say each language in India has a nuance of its own, so creating a ChatGPT-like product is an ambitious challenge.
Ola Electric, India's largest maker of electric scooters, launched its most affordable ride on Tuesday, in an attempt to woo more customers and expand its electric two-wheeler lineup.
Doctors warn that overwork is leading to lifestyle diseases like diabetes and spondylitis.
More and more women are making their presence felt in jobs related to sciences, technology, and engineering across organisations.
SoftBank Group-backed Ola Electric is in talks with multiple global suppliers to build a battery cell manufacturing plant in India with a capacity of up to 50-gigawatt hours, sources said. As part of its broader electrification push, the firm plans to invest in companies with advanced cell and battery technology, alongside the 50 Gwh battery plant. Ola Electric needs 40 Gwh of battery capacity to power 10 million electric scooters annually. The remainder will be for its electric cars, which the company plans to manufacture in the future.
As much as 35 per cent to 40 per cent of all vehicles sold in the country across segments will be electric by 2030, up from a mere 2 per cent this year, says a Bain & Co report released today. This translates to 14-16 million new electric vehicles (EVs) selling in a year. The inflexion point, which is now being seen month on month in many segments (such as two-wheelers which hit around 4-5 per cent in December), will be more than visible in 2026, when 4-5 million EVs across segments are expected to be sold, accounting for 15-20 per cent of the total sales, says the report.
'Through volume numbers and unit sales one can see, we are not making a loss'
Start-ups don't care that mad-money funding comes to a hard stop after an IPO, observes Debashis Basu. As a listed entity, corporate actions have to take the interests of all shareholders, especially minority shareholders, into account. So far, we are not seeing any sign of it, observes Debashis Basu.
With regard to his investment in Ola, Bansal said that on the one hand, the ride-hailing major had emerged as a global force in the mobility space and on the other it continued to build deeper for various needs of a billion Indians through its platform. This is the largest funding by an individual in the app cab.
SoftBank-backed mobility firm Ola, announced expansion of its employee stock options (ESOP) pool to Rs 3000 crore. Ola is also allocating an additional Rs 400 crore worth of stocks to employees in the run up to its IPO. The allocation rewards Ola's high impact employees and will lead to long term wealth creation for them.
Ola Electric on Monday said it will foray into the electric car segment with plans to launch its first model by 2024. The company, which struggled with deliveries for its electric scooters after it announced entry into the segment exactly a year ago, has set an ambitious target of selling 10 lakh electric cars by 2026-2027. In a press conference, Ola founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said Ola Electric aims to provide a range of electric two-wheelers to electric cars which are priced in the range of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 50 lakh.
The three companies - Ola, Hyundai and Kia - will co-create solutions to operate and manage fleet vehicles.
Ride-hailing major Ola on Wednesday said it will launch its electric two-wheeler range in New Zealand. This will help support the New Zealand government's goal of bringing on road 64,000 new electric vehicles by the end of 2021, while also helping the public sector become carbon neutral by 2025, Ola said in a statement. According to the industry sources, the company plans to launch the range in New Zealand over the next 6-9 months.
The new tranche of funding raises Ola's valuation to $5.74 billion from $4.45 billion in October 2017
Ola Electric will roll out its complete offering of electric scooters and motorcycles in each segment of the market - premium, mass premium, and economical - in the next 12 months in a bid to push for a near-full conversion of the two-wheeler market to electric in three years. According to Bhavish Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Ola Electric, "ICE (internal combustion engine) products will fall off a cliff." He also says the company is aiming to become profitable next year.
For every one experienced candidate being recruited by e-two wheeler companies, 10 have no prior experience; recruitments are for skilled, low-end jobs, not for managerial or supervisory roles.
'Ola in India makes money on every ride. Our focus over the past couple of years has been to keep growing the market and our share in the market and build up on sustainable business,' says co-founder and CEO Bhavish Aggarwal.
Ola co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal on Thursday said Ola Electric sold scooters worth over Rs 600 crore on the first day of the sale of its model S1. The executive noted that the company will shut the purchasing process from Thursday midnight. Ola Electric had on Wednesday commenced the sale process of its electric scooter, which comes in two trims - Ola S1 and S1 Pro.
Ola commits to invest $100 mn in Vogo, to bring scooter-sharing to its app, reports Alnoor Peermohamed.
Bhavish Aggarwal, the founder of ride-hailing firm Ola who disrupted the electric scooters market in the country, is planning to launch an electric sports car in 2024. The plan will put it in competition with Indian players, such as the Tata group and Mahindra & Mahindra, and global giants like Tesla and Hyundai. Aggarwal, recently, took a group of reporters to the firm's design studio at the Ola campus in Bengaluru where his teams are working on several EVs, including scooters, motorcycles, sedans, and SUVs - and even robotaxis.
Ola's factory will create 10,000 jobs and serve as the company's global manufacturing hub for India and international markets.
Cab aggregator Ola is laying off 1,400 staff from rides, financial services and food business as revenues declined by 95 per cent in the last two months due to coronavirus pandemic, a note by CEO Bhavish Aggarwal said. In an email to employees, Aggarwal made it clear that the prognosis ahead for the business is "very unclear and uncertain" and the impact of this crisis is "definitely going to be long-drawn for us".
Flipkart's appointment of Kalyan Krishnamurthy as CEO and Ola's choice of PepsiCo's Vishal Kaul for COO speaks to the growing trend of bringing in experienced professionals to run business. Karan Choudhury reports.
Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown, 14 is the youngest person among world's 100 most influential people by TIME magazine.
The deal brings the two start-up stalwarts - Bansal and Ola co-founder and chief executive officer Bhavish Aggarwal - together in the backdrop of growing foreign control in this space.
TIME said a record 45 people on this list are under 40 -- including the youngest designer ever, 14-year-old actor Millie Bobby Brown -- and a common theme in the tributes is how much people can learn from them.
Ola Electric became the latest among electric scooter (e-scooter) makers to have started the exercise of recalling a specific batch of its model after a rap on the knuckles by the government. Union Minister of Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari on Thursday advised electric vehicle (EV) companies to act responsibly by identifying and recalling defective batches without waiting for orders or guidelines from the ministry. The Bengaluru-based start-up is conducting pre-emptive diagnostics and health check on 1,441 scooters, it said in a statement on Sunday.
Ola Electric on Thursday said it will bring its electric scooter to the Indian market in July this year, and is working on setting up a 'Hypercharger Network' to include one lakh charging points across 400 cities. Last year, Ola had announced a Rs 2,400 crore investment for setting up its first electric scooter factory in Tamil Nadu. Upon completion, the factory will create nearly 10,000 jobs and will be the world's largest scooter manufacturing facility that will initially have an annual capacity of 2 million units.
As a tech services company, Ola has never been in hardcore manufacturing. And unlike in ride hailing, which is a two-player market (Uber is the only other competitor), in two-wheelers it faces many entrenched players. But most of all, rivals say Ola's targets are out of sync with most, even ambitious, projections.
In the UK, Ola is the only app that offers black cabs and private hire vehicles, giving both the driver-partners as well as the users, more choice.
Upon completion, the factory will create almost 10,000 jobs and will initially have an annual capacity of 2 million units.
Cab-hailing service Ola is on the fast track on the back of a $500 million funding.
Uber on Tuesday said it is laying off about 600 employees in India -- about a quarter of its staff in the country -- as business has taken a major hit amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The development comes days after rival Ola had announced laying off 1,400 people from its rides, financial services and food business.
The entry of SoftBank-backed Ola into the electric scooter (e-scooter) segment is set to power up the overall market and perhaps fast-track the adoption of battery-operated vehicles. But for manufacturers of internal combustion engine (ICE)-powered two-wheelers, such as Bajaj Auto, Hero MotoCorp, and TVS Motor, it will be a double whammy. Not only will they have to contend with the aggressive pricing of Ola's scooter and incur a loss at each unit of the e-scooter sold, the volumes of their regular (ICE) models, too, could feel the squeeze, observed analysts. Ola is expected to price its e-scooter in the range of Rs 85,000-1.1 lakh.
Ola, which is now present in seven cities in the UK, said its easy-to-use app would transform commuting experiences in these areas providing the community with greater travel choice as well as quicker and easier access to cabs.
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