JustRide, a Mumbai-based startup which provides self-drive cars on rent, has secured $3 million in its bridge round. The funding comes from global investors, including San Francisco-based Susa Ventures, Kima Ventures, Axan Ventures.
Along with them, other investors such as London-based SCM Holdings and IT-Farm from Japan along with Y Combinator partners Justin Kan (co-founder of Jutin.tv & Twitch.tv), Qasar Younis (COO of Y Combinator) and Paul Buccheit (creator of Gmail) have also participated.
Post this round of funding, the total amount raised by the company now stands at $6.5 million. Earlier, the startup had raised $2 million in bridge round. This year, it also raised two seed rounds of $400k and $120k from Dheeraj Jain and Y Combinator.
The fresh funds will now be used by the company to bolster its car sharing platform JustConnect. It will also invest money in another product, Yabber, an IoT device for cars to analyse the driving skills of the customer which is based on the company’s Smart Vehicle Technology .
Founded by entrepreneurs from NIT-Allahabad and IIT-Powai, JustRide leases cars from individual owners and allows users to get them delivered to their current position, optimally within half an hour. Earlier this year, in March, the company shifted to a car-sharing marketplace from an aggregator-based model in March this year.
Abhishek Mahajan, CFO of JustRide, projects that the company will be profitable and clock an annual GMV of $5 million once they have 500 cars in their fleet. Currently, the company claims an annual gross margin value of $3.5 million and $1.5 million in net revenues.
Further, the company is also looking to raise a higher round of $7 million from the current list of global investors to invest in its in-house ‘Smart Vehicle Technology’. The new round will be raised only if the new business model of car sharing works as per the company’s plan.
