Ola has reportedly invested in car-pooling startup sRide that has its headquarters in Pune. If reports are to be believed, Ola is likely to pick up 26% equity in this car-pooling startup and the value of this stake could be around Rs 30 crore. As per the Economic Times report, sRide is being valued between Rs 100 crore and Rs 150 crore. There could be other investors too looking to pick up a pie in sRide, but these have not been confirmed yet. For sRide, this investment by Ola might be the first such institutional funding it is receiving since the $1 million it had raised in 2016 all came from angel investors.
Car-pooling is a segment being looked at by investors with increasing interest. QuickRide is another similar startup in the car-pooling business that has been looking for funding. sRide has its operations currently in limited number of cities, that include Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru. In addition, the company has corporate clients as well.
From the perspective of Ola and its parent company ANI Technologies, there has been the urge to diversify out of the ride-hailing platform that has been seeing a decline in the business overall. The company is currently in the process of raising a total of $1 billion as part of its series J funding. Of that, some amounts may go towards making strategic investments. $100 million has been committed to Vogo, a scooter-sharing startup. These moves will resemble what the US company, Uber, has been saying that ‘urban mobility’ is the watchword. So, with the core cab-hailing business and scooter sharing Vogo and now sRide getting added does make sense.
Ola has already made moves to integrate the Vogo service into its app and allowing the users to book the scooters as well.