Ola Electric’s Valuation Jumps Four Times After SoftBank Bet

Masayoshi Son isn’t slowing down his investments in India’s startups. His latest bet helped a venture boost valuation by nearly four times in four months

Softbank Vision Fund picked up 26 percent stake in Ola Electric Mobility, the electric arm of India’s largest ride-hailing company, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies. That took its valuation to about $958 million, just short of the unicorn status.

Ola Electric Mobility issued 4,326 fully and compulsorily convertible preference shares to SB Topaz (Cayman) Ltd. for about Rs 1,725.04 crore ($250 million), fillings showed. SoftBank, the largest investor in Ola, will hold 26 percent in the electric arm of Ola.

Ola, operated by ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd., spun off its electric business in March. Headed by Anand Shah, a former BMW executive, and Ankit Jain, who headed Ola’s connected vehicle platform, the firm had earlier raised Rs 400 crore from Matrix Partners, Tiger Global and Ratan Tata, which valued the startup at nearly $250 million valuation, according to BloombergQuint’s calculation.

Softbank is now the second largest investor in the electric mobility startup after ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Tiger Global and Matrix hold about 7 percent and 4.3 percent stake respectively. Ratan Tata holds about 0.5 percent.

Ola Electric runs several pilots involving charging solutions, battery swapping stations, and deploying electric taxis across two, three and four-wheeler segments.

Ola last year said it aims to bring 1 million electric vehicles to Indian roads by 2022.