Ola Electric makes for a very interesting read-up in India’s fast blazing and dynamic startup industry. Like many unicorn startups, the Bhavish Aggarwal promoted startup proudly wears its unicorn tag on its sleeves and counts Softbank among other marquee investors. But this high-profile startup is yet to deliver a single product to the customer, let alone showing a semblance of profit on its balance sheet.
Bajaj Auto’s CEO Rahul Bajaj recently took series of potshots on cash-burning startups like Ola, claiming that Ola’s high flying valuation has no meaning since it has not sold a single vehicle in the market.
Despite all these uncertainties about its profitability, Ola Electric keeps raising big-ticket funding rounds. The Mumbai based company has now raised a little over INR 398 Cr in a fresh funding round led by Temasek. The round also saw participation from Edelwesis, IIFL, Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s VSS Investco and others.
Interestingly, the round also brought quite a few high-profile Bollywood celebrities on Ola Electric’s cap table. Farhan Akhtar, Zoya Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani have made their due contributions in this funding round. The trio runs a highly successful Bollywood production house called Excel Production.
Notably, Ola had raised $200 Mn in October from Softbank and other. It has also reportedly raised $100 Mn debt from Bank of Baroda.
Amid this funding blitz, Ola has been delaying the roll out of its two electric vehicles that it has been teasing through promotions since past few months. The company has equally seen the exodus of several top executives, which earned the company handful of bad press with many analyst raising questions about the toxic work culture existing in the company.
Ola will be the many high profile companies that will be plausibly aiming for an IPO next year.
