News Update

Ola Financial to be lead by Bhavish Agarwal’s Brother post Avail’s acquisition

• ByStartupStory     |    April 11, 2022

Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola since after two weeks announced to acquire neo-bank Avail Finance, the IPO-bound cab-hailing and superapp, the acquisition of Avail Finance in a share swap deal worth $50 Mn has been approved in the making firm’s board. 

According to Ola’s last month statement, as it looks to build a mobility-focused financial services business under Ola Financial, the acquisition is a key step in Ola’s broader push into the fintech space. 

As per a report, post the acquisition, brother of Bhavish Aggarwal- Ankush Aggarwal, and also Ola Financial will be head by the founder of Avail Finance. 

Last month, Ola had said that Avail Finance’s products and capabilities will be leveraged by it which will further strengthen its lending business and help it in order to expand into neo banking products. Along with a strong technical team across tech, product and design, data science and analytics amongst others, Avail Finance’s able leadership team with experience in the consumer lending industry will be augmented by its fintech business. 

In Avail Finance, Ola till date was holding 9% stake as in 2019 it had invested in the fintech startup. 

Avail Finance, founded in 2017 by Ankush Aggarwal and Tushar Mehndiratta, has to date raised over $38 Mn from external funding. Alpha Wave Incubation and Matrix India Partners counts under the investors of the startup. It has to be highlighted that in Ola both Matrix and Alpha Wave are also the investors. 

To the blue-collar workforce including gig workers in India, it claims to offer short team loans. As per its website, to blue collar workers, the neo-bank offers instant loans starting from INR 5,000 and up to INR 10,000 as an advance salary. 

At present, Avail Finance competes against the likes of several fintech lending tech players who in recent years have been mushroomed. Avail Finance pits against slice, MoneyTap, unicard, Early Salary, Lendingkart, among others. 

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