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Context is everything.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Detailed stories on technology startups, business and economic current affairs.
Faced with chronic neglect, lack of focus, high attrition and supply-side constraints, Ola's cab business, once the darling of investors, has turned into a dodo.
Editor's note: Bhavish Aggarwal's troubles aren't ending. The electric scooter fiasco has kept people so occupied over the past six months that the rapid decline in the cab business has gone almost unnoticed. But here's the thing about bad news: it always comes out. So when Moneycontrol reported in March that ANI Technologies—the parent company of Ola, which was previously seen making its debut on the public markets this year—is planning to raise a new round of funding at a lower valuation of $5 billion, it didn't surprise people who have been tracking the company for the last few years. Ola was last valued at $7.3 billion in December 2021, when it raised $139 million in its Series J round, widely seen as the startup's pre-IPO round. Before that, it raised $500 million from private equity firm Warburg Pincus and the Singapore government’s fund Temasek Holdings in July in a secondary sale of shares, giving early investors a partial exit. In December, the company also raised $500 million through a term loan B from institutional investors. This is not the first time …
India’s leading tech hardware distribution company is making the most of the unprecedented rise in global prices of laptops and other tech hardware. There’s just one problem.
Shared rides seemed tailor-made for India’s congested cities. Yet, economics, trust and regulation kept the idea from scaling.
While its peers headed for the exit, the fund house doubled down on the falling stock. The contrarian call now looks expensive—and risky.
