Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal invests $92M in Ola

NelsonG · February 19, 2019

The money is starting to flow from India’s largest startup exit. Ola has added a major name to its ongoing financing round after it confirmed that Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal has invested 650 crore INR (around $92 million) into the Indian ride-hailing business.

The deal rumored in January when Paper.vc, an intelligence service that sifts through company filings in India, noticed that Bansal had committed to investing 150 crore. Today, eight-year-old Ola not only confirmed the pairing, but it revealed that the actual size of Bansal’s investment is significantly higher. It represents his most prominent and largest investment to date, and his first major deal since he left Flipkart following its sale to Walmart for $16 billion last year.

TechCrunch understands that Bansal will not take an advisory role nor will he be involved in operations.

The investment is part of an ongoing Series J round of financing that is likely to exceed $1 billion and would value Ola, which competes fiercely with Uber in India, at around $6 billion. Bansal’s commitment comes a month after existing investor Steadview Capital put $75 million towards the round.

Here’s what Bansal — who started Flipkart with co-founder Binny Bansal in 2007 — had to say on the deal:

Ola is one of India’s most promising consumer businesses, that is creating deep impact and lasting value for the ecosystem. On one hand, they have emerged as a global force in the mobility space and on the other, they continue to build deeper for various needs of a billion Indians through their platform, becoming a trusted household name today.

I have known Bhavish as an entrepreneur and as a friend over these years and I have great respect for what he and the team at Ola have built in just 8 years! I am personally thrilled to be part of the Ola journey and I look forward to contributing to their success.

Aggarwal, Ola’s CEO, in turn, lauded Bansal as “an icon of entrepreneurship.”

“His investment is a huge encouragement for all of us at Ola and our mission to serve a billion people,” he said in a statement. “I personally look forward to learning from Sachin’s journey, his mentorship and guidance, as we look to build one of the most impactful global businesses out of India.”

Ola is locked in a dog fight with Uber, which has made India its highest priority market outside of the U.S. Uber started slowly in India, but it is pushing hard in the country having opened a dedicated local R&D center and hired a country management team that operates outside of the rest of its Asia Pacific business.

To battle its U.S. rival, Ola has expanded nationwide to cover over 100 cities and towns. It has also expanded beyond just cars, developed its own mobile money service, invested in other startups and pushed other strategies to appeal to local customers.

Flipkart’s exit money may be moving back into the ecosystem, but the company is running without the two men who founded it. Sachin Bansal left around the time of the deal while Binny Bansal (the two are not related) resigned following an incident of “serious personal misconduct” just months after the Walmart acquisition was finalized.

Binny has set up a fund — expect to see more Walmart capital flowing back into Indian startups — but his newest project is a venture aimed at helping India’s most promising founders to scale their businesses.