Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal invests Rs 650 crore in Ola

Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal has invested Rs 650 crore ($92 million) in ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates cab-hailing application Ola. The investment is not only Bansal's largest individual investment, but also accounts as the largest financing by an individual in Ola to date. Bansal has been an active angel investor, typically writing cheques between $100,000 and $500,000.

The investment comes eight months after Bansal quit Flipkart, considering Walmart picked up 77 per cent stake in the Indian e-commerce company for $16 billion. He co-founded the company over a decade ago with Binny Bansal.

Bansal said,"I am personally thrilled to be part of the Ola journey and I look forward to contributing to their success". The investment, made in Bansal's personal capacity, is part of Ola's larger Series J funding round, providing Bansal Rs 150 crore worth of share issues in January and values the Bengaluru firm at around $6.5 billion.

In January, Ola received Rs 149.99 crore ($21.18 million) as the first part of the Rs 650-crore funding round, according to the company's filing with the Registrar of Companies. Bansal's investment values Ola at almost $5.8 billion, according to TechCircle estimates, a slight upsurge from $5.7 billion, when it raised $74 million (Rs 520 crore) from Steadview Capital last month. The investment is part of Ola's plans to raise about $1 billion in funding. In October last year, the Bengaluru-based company had announced raising $1.1 billion funding from China's Tencent Holdings and SoftBank Group.

"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," Bansal said.

Bansal, along with Aggarwal, had called for policies in the past that protects domestic companies against their global competitors like Amazon and Uber and alleged these firms for "dumping capital" to win customers in India. The 650 crore investment will boost the Bhavish Aggarwal-co-founded firm in its battle against Uber, headquartered in San Francisco, California, that is rapidly gaining popularity and customers in India.