Sachin Bansal may pick up stake in Ola through secondary transactions, to raise a fund with corpus of $700 mn-$1 bn

Sachin Bansal, co-founder and former chief executive of e-commerce platform Flipkart, could pick a stake in ride-hailing platform Ola through secondary transactions, a media report said. According to The Economic Times, Bansal is reportedly thinking of raising a fund with a corpus of $700 million-$1 billion. The 36-year-old Bansal offloaded his 5.5 percent stake in Flipkart after US retail giant’s Walmart acquired the homegrown firm. Bansal pocketed anywhere around Rs 5,717 crore from his stake sale, media reports said. Ola has raised $50 million from Hong Kong-based Sailing Capital and the China-Eurasian Economic Cooperation Fund (CEECF), as the SoftBank-backed cab-hailing major bolsters its war chest for its battle against Uber in markets like India, the UK and others. [caption id=“attachment_5021731” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] Sailing and CEECF (state-backed investment fund of China) will together hold more than one percent stake in Ola (run by ANI Technologies), it added. The latest fund infusion is believed to peg the valuation of the company between $3.7 billion and $4 billion. The home-grown ride-hailing platform on Tuesday said it plans to launch operations in New Zealand and expand its overseas rivalry with US-based peer Uber Technologies Inc. The Indian start-up founded in 2011, backed by Japan’s SoftBank Group, first expanded its international operations with a foray into Australia and the United Kingdom earlier this year. Brian Dewil has been appointed as country manager for New Zealand operations, Ola said. The company, which is competing with Uber in India’s $12 billion taxi market, did not provide further details about its expansion plans. In October last year, the Bengaluru-based company had raised $1.1 billion in funding from Chinese firm Tencent Holdings and existing investor, SoftBank. There were also indications that the company could raise an additional $1 billion in funding. Earlier this month, founders of Ola, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, have sought Competition Commission of India’s (CCI) approval for increasing stake in ANI Technologies, which owns the cab aggregator. The acquisition would be made through Lazarus Holdings, which is incorporated in Singapore and is a special purpose vehicle which will be used as an investment holding company. --With inputs from agencies