Ola Becomes Third Most Valuable Venture Backed Company

Ola, the Bangalore based taxi sharing app has become India's third most valuable venture backed company, after raising INR 2,500 crores from investors.

Ola, valued at INR 15,600 crores, has decided to use this money to expand its business to new locations, after buying its rival, TaxiForSure last month.

The company has plans to rapidly double its products and engineering team to around 1,000 in the next quarter.

Ola is competing with Uber, which is smaller than Ola in India, but is the world's second biggest start-up company, after Xiaomi, the Chinese firm.

Among Ola's latest investors are DST Global, a Russian company, Singapore's GIC and hedge fund Falcon Edge Capital, based in New York.

Ola plans to start taxi aggregation services in 200 smaller cities and towns in India, using its latest funding. The company will also use a bit of the funding to grow business at TaxiForSure.

Both Taxi aggregators, Ola and Uber are still still banned in Delhi officially, since the government is yet to come up with rules to govern them.

Experimenting on logistics, Ola has started delivering meals from restaurants on its app since last month.