Among the top ten ride hailing companies in the world according to Market Trend, we can see some familiar Asian companies. Chinese company, Didi still at the top. Followed with Ola Cabs, Grab and Go-jek.
ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd. founded the company in 2010. Initially, the company was based on Mumbai, India as an online cab hailing app. Then it moved to Bangalore.
Big money for Ola Cabs’ many acquisitions
Ola Cabs started expanding the company by acquiring many other companies. The first one was TaxiForSure in 2014. It was a taxi company based on Bengaluru. Ola pays approximately $200 million for the acquisition. With that, it secures access to TaxiForSure cabs via its application.
Going further, it also acquired Geotagg company later in the same year. Geotagg was a trip planning applications company. And three years later, on the purpose of expanding it services, it acquired Foodpanda. It then started on opening its food delivery service.
As if it wasn’t enough, Ola made another acquisition in 2018. It acquired Ridlr or what previously known as Traffline. Ridlr was a company that offered public transportation ticketing app.
Everything was possible for Ola’s massive fund raising. After 22 fund raising rounds within 9 years of its development, it raised the total of $3.8 B. Its biggest investors are Softbank Asia, Hyundai and Kia.
India is not enough
In 2018, it made its’ first attempt on entering the international market by launching its services in Australia and New Zealand. Going further, it entered the European market in 2019. It started by introducing Ola Auto Rickshaw in UK at March.
But the road was not smooth for Ola. It previously faced numerous problems from various aspects. For once, customers personal data are exposed through SMS messages. Then there’s the problems with the drivers from driver’s credibility to their welfare.
Nevertheless, those problems seem not having much effect on Ola Cabs’ growth. Now, it has more than 1 million registered vehicles in around 200 cities. And as of March 2019, the company is valued around $6.2 billion.
