App based taxi aggregator Ola (formerly known as Olacabs) raises $400 million (Rs.2495 crore) in Series E round of funding from a clutch of investors including GIC, SoftBank Group, DST Global, Falcon Edge Capital, Accel Partners (U.S.), Steadview capital and Tiger Global to fuel its business expansion into smaller cities in India. The investment led by Russian venture capital firm - DST Global.

The online cab service firm Ola, which was founded in 2011 by Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati is operated by Mumbai based ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Ola expanded its network from 10 cities to 100 cities in the current year and anticipated to extend to 200 cities by the end of this year.

This development has been accelerated with getting hold of India's second largest aggregator TaxiForSure in March 2015. It has a network of 70,000 cabs and 30,000 autos; due to the acquisition of TaxiForSure it added about 15,000 cabs. It leveraged its strength by going beyond transportation like instant food delivery with Olacafe, which is available in prime localities in four cities. The firm is also planning to start delivering grocery as a part of the initiative. Earlier, Ola has raised $277 million from Softbank, Matrix Partners, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global and many others. The company also raised $210 million last year by SoftBank. The latest round takes the total funding to $677 million.

Rahul Mehta, managing partner, DST Global says, "Ola offers a strong value proposition for both users and drivers and is transforming personal transportation in India. We're excited by their impressive growth and the potential to expand the platform into other categories and look forward to continue working with their visionary founders and management".