It's no secret anymore — there's an IPO fever infecting the ride-hailing industry. After Didi (DIDI) and Grab, it's now time for Indian-based Ola to get on board and start planning its debut on the stock market. Ola's IPO should raise about $1b, with an expected valuation that could go up to $8b. The company is backed by Softbank and has chosen Citigroup (C) to manage the filing for its IPO, which should come in October.
With 1.5 million drivers spread across 250 different cities, Ola is a serious competitor to Uber (UBER) in India. In 2019, Uber announced it had more than 50% of the ride-hailing market share in India, counting 14 million rides a week. Ola has tended to avoid talks on the number of rides it serves, but from internal accounts, it appears the number is close to 2 million passengers each day (Uber, you've been warned).
Why it matters
Ola is one of the 63 Indian startups that became a unicorn this year. More Indian unicorns have been born in 2021 than in the entire past decade. Earlier this year, Zomato (ZOMATO) became India's first unicorn IPO. Paytm and Flipkart will join Ola and create an unprecedented number of Indian unicorns prepping to go public — but do beware of bubbles.