Ola gets $500m to battle Uber, investors include Didi Kuaidi

Ola, Uber’s rival in India, today announced that it closed US$500 million in a series F funding round.

Investors include Didi Kuaidi, Uber’s rival app in China, Baillie Gifford, Tiger Capital, SoftBank Group, FalconEdge Capital, and DST Global. Ola currently claims a million booking requests a day, with over 350,000 vehicles using its service. It works across 102 cities in India.

Ganging up

This latest round includes many of Ola’s earlier investors, but the most interesting entrant is Didi Kuaidi. Formed after a merger of two ride hailing companies, Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache, Didi Kuaidi is Uber’s biggest rival in China. It has raised over US$4.42 billion in funding from investors like Alibaba and TenCent and has investors SoftBank, DST Global, and Tiger Capital in common with Ola.

Didi Kuaidi has also invested in other Uber competitors, including US$100 million in Lyft, a ride-sharing app based in the United States. It also participated in Southeast Asian challenger GrabTaxi’s US$350 million round.

Earlier this year, Ola acquired its Indian competitor TaxiForSure for US$200 million. It’s now raised US$1.3 billion in funding, the large majority of which has been raised in the past year.

Uber announced in July that it plans to invest US$1 billion into its own India operations.