Ola gets CCI nod for investments by Temasek, Warburg Pincus, Bhavish Aggarwal

Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved investments worth $500 million in ride sharing aggregator Ola by Temasek, Warburg Pincus and its founder Bhavish Aggarwal.

In two separate statements on Friday, the competition regulator said that it has approved “acquisition of shares by Plum Wood Investment and voting rights by Bhavish Aggarwal in ANI Technologies Private Limited”, and “acquisition of shares by MacRitchie Investments and Fort Canning Investments; and voting rights by Mr. Bhavish Aggarwal in ANI Technologies Private Limited”.

ANI Technologies Private Limited offers taxi and auto rickshaw aggregation services under the brand name 'Ola'. The online platform currently offers cab hailing services in India, Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

MacRitchie is an investment holding company. It is a subsidiary of Temasek Holdings (Private) Limited. Temasek is an investment company based in Singapore. Meanwhile, Fort Canning is an investment holding company.

Plum Wood is an investment holding company. Shareholders of Plum Wood are certain private equity funds managed by Warburg Pincus LLC (Warburg Pincus). Warburg Pincus is headquartered in New York, United States. It acts as a manager to certain private equity funds.

Bhavish Aggarwal had founded Ola with Ankit Bhati in 2011. He currently is executive director parent company ANI and CEO of Ola.

On July 9, Ola announced that Temasek, Warburg Pincus and Aggarwal have invested $500 million (more than ₹3,700 crore), ahead of its proposed IPO. Deals beyond a certain threshold require approval of CCI.

This is among the largest investments in the Indian consumer internet space by these funds, a statement had said.