Vanguard slashes Ola's valuation by 35% to $4.8 billion

Bhavish Aggarwal

ANI Technologies, the parent company of ride-hailing mobility startup Ola, saw its value reduced to $4.8 billion, down 35 percent from $7.4 billion by US-based investment management firm Vanguard Group. This is another example of a trend in which valuation markdowns are affecting the Indian startup ecosystem.

Vanguard holds 166,185 shares of ANI Technologies, which account for about 0.7 percent stake in the ride-hailing startup, according to data collated by Moneycontrol through Tracxn.

Vanguard has pegged the value of its stake at $33,865,000 as of February 28, down from $51,825,000 as of August last year. This implies that the US-based investor pegs Ola's fair value at about $4.8 billion.

This is the third valuation markdown of Ola by the same investor. Vanguard Group cut the value of its investment in the ride-hailing firm by 45 percent in the first half of 2020 and another 9.5 percent in 2021.

VCCircle was the first to report the development.

This comes on the back of a series of valuation markdowns happening in the startup ecosystem.

In a second markdown in just four months, US-based VC firm Invesco had cut Swiggy’s valuation to $5.5 billion in May.

Earlier on March 31, reports suggested that Blackrock, the world’s biggest asset management company, slashed Byju's valuation by 50 percent internally. In September last year, SoftBank had reportedly marked down Oyo’s valuation from $10 billion to $2.7 billion

The markdown to Ola has come at a time when the company is expecting to list on the Indian bourses early next year.

Commenting on its IPO plans, its founder Bhavish Aggarwal has said that it will look at an IPO early next year. Aggarwal has told Moneycontrol that the company plans to get its ride-sharing business listed sometime next year.