Bangalore March 3, 2015:  Signalling consolidation in the burgeoning market of  online personal travel aggregation,  leading mobile app for taxis, , Ola (formerly Olacabs) announced  yesterday that it has acquired TaxiForSure, India’s second largest cab website, in a $ 200 million deal.
Ola and TaxiForSure will continue to operate as separate entities. The leadership and all of the 1700 employees shall continue to work with TaxiForSure, with 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 is currently in 47 cities with over 15,000 vehicles registered on its platform.
TaxiForSure follows a model of supply and distribution by working with cab operators compared to Ola’s model of working with driver-entrepreneurs. TaxiForSure has also focused heavily on the economy segment of cab consumers with innovative offerings like Tata Nanos as part of their fleet and Rs 49 as base fares in the past.  Only weeks ago in Bangalore they extended their service to auto rikshaws.
Says Bhavish Aggarwal, Co-founder and CEO: “Ola and TaxiForSure share the same vision of revolutionising urban mobility. TaxiForSure has a great team and they have built avery 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.”
Adds Raghunandan G, Co-founder and CEO, TaxiForSure: “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. This development ensures that industry attractiveness is preserved and the combined entity can race ahead and continue tocreate unprecedented value for all stakeholders.”
Ola founded in Jan 2011 by IIT Bombay alumni Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati , 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  which started its operations in Bangalore in June 2011,  are Accel Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and Helion Venture Partners