Hyundai to Invest $300 Million in Indian Ride-Hailing App
20 March, 2019
Hyundai is investing US$300 million in Indian ride-hailing app Ola, the Korean carmaker said Tuesday.
Hyundai vice chairman Chung Eui-sun met with Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal in Seoul to sign for what will be the largest investment the conglomerate has ever made in another company. Ola was established in 2011 and offers ride-hailing services in 125 cities around the world using 1.3 million vehicles, from tuk-tuks to luxury cars.
A senior Hyundai executive said, "We used to sell cars to individual consumers, but future sales will often involve large volumes supplied to car-sharing services." He added the company will then be able to use mileage data, highway information and other big data from such companies to develop self-driving cars.
Hyundai also invested $12.3 million in Revv, another Indian ride-hailing service, last August.
The main attraction of the Indian car market is its rapid growth. With a population of 1.3 billion, India's car saturation remains low at just 35 cars for every 1,000 people, compared to 144 in China.
Sales rose from 2.54 million cars in 2014 to 3.37 million in 2018, growing between three to eight percent annually. By contrast, growth in China's car market already shrank 3.4 percent last year.
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