[wheelguy]

Ride-hailing firm Ola has raised 35.9 crore in fresh funding from an investment fund named ‘ARK Ola Pre-IPO Private Investment Trust’, indicating that the company might have started preparing to go public in the not-so-distant future.

The Seoul-based private trust fund invested in Ola’s ongoing Series-J round, according to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies, and at a valuation of $6.3 billion as of today’s US dollar exchange rate. Online platform Entrackr was the first to report of the Pre-IPO Trust Fund’s investment in Ola on Monday.

While details of fund composition are lacking from the regulatory filings, it could possibly be an investment vehicle to shore up on late-stage capital, as companies often do ahead of their IPO. ARK Impact, an asset management company, seems to be behind the fund.

ET could not independently ascertain if Ola was indeed readying for its IPO, but taking the company public is something cofounder Bhavish Aggarwal has said he definitely wants to do. Ola did not respond to queries till press-time Monday.

In July last year, Aggarwal had said that Ola was making a profit on every ride and would become cash-flow positive soon. He and cofounder Ankit Bhati were aiming for an IPO in the next “3-4 years”, Aggarwal had said.


Source: ET Auto

[SmartCat]

Entrackr article (mentioned by ET) suggests that Ola might go for an IPO in another 18 months
https://entrackr.com/2019/09/exclusi...sting-2-years/

As the name suggests, the SPV is likely to be used by Ola for managing pre-IPO rounds of private investment amongst others. Multiple Entrackr sources, including a couple of company’s senior executives, have confirmed that the company has started working on a plan for public listing.

“If you factor in Ola lobby for flexible listing norms for startups and creation of a SPV around the same time, it is visible that the company has been working on an IPO,” said three of the five sources. They requested anonymity as revelations can hamper their interest with Ola