Indian ride hailing aggregator Ola has plans to go public sometime next year, but a final date for the initial public offering (IPO) is yet to be decided, said chairman and group CEO Bhavish Aggarwal.
Both Ola and Ola Electric, the electric mobility arm of the group, have adequate capital and balance sheets and will go public in due course, Aggarwal told CNBC, adding that the company has not announced any IPO plans as of yet.
Aggarwal stated that Ola will be first to go public since it is a more mature business. This will happen sometime next year, but there isn’t a final date to declare, he added.
Earlier this week, Ola had begun talks with investment bankers to manage its upcoming IPO, Bloomberg had reported.
Last month, Ola had started raising $500 million to find its initial share issue. This fundraising round saw participation from Temasek Holdings Pte, an affiliate of Warburg Pincus LLC and Fort Cannings Investment. A clutch of existing investors, including Tiger Global, had sold their shares. Earlier this month, Competition Commission of India (CCI) had approved these investments.
Bangalore-based Ola, whose parent is ANI Technologies Pvt, was founded in 2011 by Aggarwal and his Indian Institute of Technology classmate Ankit Bhati. The company also offers services in Australia, the UK and New Zealand, and employs more than a million drivers in over 100 cities on its platform.
Aggarwal’s electric venture , Ola Electric Mobility Pvt, launched its first offering – Ola S1 electric scooter – on August 15. The electric two-wheeler is being built at the company’s Futurefactory located just outside Bangalore, the largest manufacturing facility for scooters in the world.
The article was first published on livemint.com