The Tatas have just invested in Uber!

It’s been quite a while that Tata was hunting for successful start ups to invest in. And here comes the big news. Tata Opportunities Fund has made an undisclosed investment on the San Francisco based taxi hailing app service Uber Technologies. This comes as the equity firm’s first ever overseas investment.

"Uber is a global innovator and with the strong use of technology, it is creating the taxi aggregation markglobally," said Padmanabh Sinha, Managing Partner of TOF's advisory team in India.

Amit Jain, Head of Uber India told the financial daily, "Tata is a strategic partner for us and we will be leveraging Tata's businesses to grow faster." Uber and Tata see a lot of synergies, in terms of vehicle financing programmes as well as networking within India to get past regulatory hurdles in a seamless manner, according to experts.

"Right now, we're particularly focused on building a great service for hundreds of millions of Indians--and Tata's leadership and experience will be crucial in helping us meet this important goal," said Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber Technologies in an emailed statement.

It’s been a month, Uber had announced about its intent to invest $1 billion in the Indian market in the coming nine months. However, this investment is separate from that committed amount.

The funding will be used by Uber to globally invest across all markets and to experiment with new innovations. Although TOF has invested, it will not be taking a board seat in Uber Technologies.

In India, Uber’s rival Ola, valued at close to $4.5 billion, has raised around $700 million recently. Funded by Softbank and Dst Global, Ola is in talks to raise close to $500 million next.

In its latest round, Uber also raised about $1 billion from Microsoft and private investment arm of the Bennett, Coleman and Company Limited (BCCL), which publishes Business Insider India. The company is now valued at about $51 billion and has raised close to $5 billion till date. Besides, China's largest search engine company Baidu has also made an undisclosed investment in the company.

"As an investor, we are not typical venture investor so we look at cash flows and do believe there is a path to profitability for Uber in the near future," Sinha added.

Earlier this year, Uber appointed former online real estate portal's president--Amit Jain-- as India head. Over the last three months, Uber has rapidly adapted itself to the Indian market, partnering with autos in Delhi and rolling out cash payment options for its users in six cities including Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Kochi and Hyderabad. This makes India the only country other than Kenya where Uber has not solely run on card-based payments, helping it expand its reach to users not well versed with loading digital cash or adding a credit card on a mobile application.