Olacabs, the radio taxi cab network, last week announced Series C funding of Rs 250 crore from Hong Kong-based equity hedge fund, Steadview Capital and venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. Existing investors Tiger Global Management and Matrix Partners also participated in this round of funding.
Ola will use the funds to expand its operations to newer markets, as well as invest a sizeable sum into the supply ecosystem to enable micro-entrepreneurship in the driver stakeholder segment. Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO, Olacabs said, "We intend to be present in at least 20 cities by the end of this year. We are also deeply involved with the supply ecosystem by helping drivers become entrepreneurs and creating socio-economic empowerment for them." ''We are happy to announce that we are earmarking a sum of Rs 100 crore towards nurturing this ecosystem in the next one year. Steadview and Sequoia are great partners to have on board, with both bringing deep understanding of consumer businesses," Aggarwal said.
Grabhouse.com raises Rs 3 crore
Mumbai-based Cryptopy Technologies, the company that runs real estate portal Grabhouse.com, has raised around Rs 3 crore from existing investor India Quotient, its founder informed VC Circle. The company plans to use the money to market the portal using search engine marketing (SEM) to enable more listings on the platform and also attract more home seekers. Earlier this year, it had raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from India Quotient and M V Krishnan of Deutsche Bank. Prior to that, it had secured funding from RB Partners' Chetan Bohra and Navin Ranka. Grabhouse is a brokerage-free site that helps people find rented accommodations.
It aims to connect owners or current tenants to prospective tenants directly in order to bypass brokers. Presently, they claim to have 53,000 broker-free houses listed on its platform, and is adding 350 houses and 250 seeker profiles on a daily basis.
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