Revv, self drive rental platform, has today announced that it has secured $9 million in Series A — a combination of both equity and debt funding. The said equity funding is led by Edelweiss Private Equity and the debt funding has been raised from financing partners such as Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services; and vehicle leasing from LeasePlan India.
The funds will be majorly be utilized for expansion. Currently, Revv is operational in four cities across the country – Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chandigarh. In the coming months, Revv may increase its services in Hyderabad with 1,000 cars and newly appointed Hyderabad CEO Chetan Jain. Further, the funding would be channelized in development of technology and pitching new products like two-sided sharing platforms & driver behaviour monitoring. They might as well be used in sectors such as predictive inventory management & dynamic pricing.
Commenting on the fundraising round, Anupam Agarwal, co-founder of Revv stated,
The rise of taxi-hailing apps has been an important market-creator, weaning people away from traditional car ownership. The key would be to address the highly varied needs of a shared-mobility user, through a suite of products tailored for each need.
Revv, self drive car rental service was founded by ex-McKinsey executives Anupam Agarwal and Karan Jain in July of 2015. In August, the company had received angel funding from a cohort of investors including Gautam Kumra, Rajat Dhawan and Ananth Narayanan. These funds were used to initiate the business plan. The company’s current vehicle fleet includes Maruti Celerio, Maruti Swift, Ford Aspire, Honda City, Nissan Sunny, Mahindra XUV and Audi Q3. The aim of the company is to change India’s ‘2% car ownership penetration’ to ‘50% car usage penetration.’
Earlier this year, major rival in the market, Zoomcar had raised a sum of $25 million from Ford Smart Mobility LLC. Zoomcar offers its customers user facing parking lots which is a far way convenient than services offered by Revv. Just ride, yet another competitor had raised $3 million in bridge funding last month. The funding by Revv gives a major push in the competition prevailing.
Further, Anupam also continues to add,
We have witnessed a continuous uptick in the acceptance of our first product (car-sharing), with very encouraging repeat rates. More than half of our revenues come from repeat users. Users are realising that a combination of hired mobility options can be a true and practical alternative to owning a car.
