The Competition Commission of India has announced on Twitter that it has accorded approval to a proposal from the founders of ride-share company Ola to enhance their stake in the parent company.
“CCI approves acquisition of 6.72% shares of ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd. by Lazarus Holdings Pte. Ltd,” the tweet reads.
Lazarus Holdings is a Singapore-incorporated subsidy set up by the parent company to be used as an investment holding company.
In the beginning of September, founders of Ola, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, along with MacRitchie Investments sought CCI’s approval to increase their stake in the cab aggregator by buying shares from some of the existing shareholders.
MacRitchie Investments is a subsidiary of Singapore-based investment company Temasek Holdings. There have been reports that Temasek invested over $200 million in Ola.
According to an Inc42 report, a few angel investors such as Rehan Yar Khan and venture capital (VC) investors, Accel India, Bessemer Venture Partners, Helion Venture Partners, and TaxiForSure founders Aprameya Radhakrishna and Raghunandan G and some Ola employees will be selling some of their shares to the founders. A few of the VCs will be making a partial exit from the company.
Last year, Ola amended its AoA (article of association) to strengthen founders Bhavish and Ankit’s rights in the company, which gave them the power to veto any further stake buy from SoftBank, which is the company’s largest shareholder.
Ola, which also counts VCs such as Matrix Partners India and Tencent as other major shareholders in the company, recently raised $50 million led by Hong Kong-based Sailing Capital and the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund (CEECF). This fundraising round takes Ola’s valuation to $3.7-4.3 billion. With this funding, both investors now hold roughly 1.17% in Ola’s parent ANI Technologies.
There have also been reports that co-founder and former CEO of Flipkart is in talks to invest $100 million in the cab aggregator. This will be from the $1 billion Sachin made from selling his entire 5.5% stake to Walmart and is said to have pocketed $1 billion from the deal.