Online cab aggregator Ola Cabs, that is backed by Japan's SoftBank, today announced that it has acquired its competitor TaxiForSure for $200 million (Rs 1238 crore) in a cash and equity deal. A press statement of Ola said the leadership and all of the 1,700 employees shall continue to work with TaxiForSure and Arvind Singhal (currently COO) being appointed the CEO. Aprameya Radhakrishna and Raghunandan G, the founders of TaxiForSure, will contribute in an advisory role for a certain period. TaxiForSure currently operates in 47 cities with over 15,000 vehicles registered on its platform.

Ola which is already the market leader has over one lakh vehicles on its platform and is present in 67 cities. Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder and CEO, Ola, said, “Ola and TaxiForSure share the same vision of revolutionising urban mobility. TaxiForSure has a great team and they have built a very exciting business in a short time. There's a lot of complementary value in the strategy TaxiForSure has followed. I'm very excited to welcome the TaxiForSure team onboard and look forward to working with them towards realising our common vision.” 

Raghunandan G, Co-founder and CEO, TaxiForSure, said, “TaxiForSure coming together with Ola will provide us with more opportunity than ever, to do what we do best. Post this acquisition; the combined entity will be strong enough and better capitalized to offer the best value to all our stakeholders, including our customers.”

Ola has been funded by Tiger Global, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, Steadview Capital and most recently, Softbank over its four rounds of fund-raising. Investors in TaxiForSure are Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Helion Venture Partners.

By Premji