Riding high on its electric vehicle (EV) ambitions, Indian ride-hailing startup Ola plans to go public in the first half of 2022. Bhavish Aggarwal, Chief Executive Officer of Ola, announced it on December 2, 2021. The company is also planning to build its electric car in 2023.
Ola, which has a majority share of India’s ride-hailing market, competes with Uber Technologies, plans to raise $1 billion through an IPO.
Ola, backed by Japan’s SoftBank Group, is also gearing up to create something of a “super app” with plans to broaden its services beyond mobility to include personal finance and microinsurance. Aggarwal stated that the app is a step in expanding the company’s presence from mobility to personal finance and microinsurance.
“We are not a company that takes a short-term view on anything. Short-term, there might be volatilities in the market, but that has never informed our decisions,” said Aggarwal, who founded the company in 2010.
Indian companies have raised a staggering $9.7 billion through initial public offerings (IPOs) in the first nine months of 2021, according to accountants EY. Still, the dismal stock market debut of Indian digital payments firm Paytm last month has caused worries among some bankers.
Ola is diversifying its business to dominate the market
Ola’s finances have bounced back in recent months. Aggarwal said that the company was improving them after the COVID-19 pandemic hit them.
“Our vision for the Ola business is to be a large, broad-based mobility platform,” Aggarwal said, adding that the Ola app already allows its 150 million customers to buy and sell new and used cars and avail vehicle finance and insurance.
In October, Ola Cars, the marketplace platform of ride-hailing app Ola, announced that it plans to acquire a market leader status in the next twelve months by obtaining $2 billion in gross merchandise values (GMV). The company announced plans to hire 10,000 people to steer the company’s ambitions.
He said he wanted to expand the offering and plans to leverage the customer base to offer personal financial services and micro-insurance, moving towards a super app. Aggarwal also intends to list Ola’s separate electric vehicle business in the future and is currently building it out starting with its electric scooters. It has received 1 million reservations.
In September this year, the startup announced that it had sold scooters worth more than INR 600 crore and four scooters each second, ever since they started taking orders for their flagship scooters S1 and S1 Pro. However, in November, the company told awaiting customers that the delivery timeline would be delayed due to global chip and electronic equipment shortages.
