Mumbai based startup
JustRide a self-driven car rental marketplace is chosen by Y Combinator for the batch of 2016. JustRide is a technology aggregator in the car rental industry with the prime products being micro and macro leasing of automobiles. The program for early stage startups make you meet the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Infact, there is only a 1.5% chance of being selected out of the thousands of global application received.
“We decided that while the rest stayed in India and attended the interview over Skype, one would head out in person”, says sources from the within the JustRide team. When you are daunting enough to cover the distance, your glory remains on board with you. They flew 10,000 miles for the 10 minute interview in Mountain View.
The team comprises of alumnus from IIT Bombay and NIT Allahabad — Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Sah, Abhishek Mahajan, Vasant Verma, and Amit Sahu.
Predicament in the Indian Transportation Infrastructure The traditional ‘rent-a-car’ ventures charge a hefty security deposit when giving them on lease. Though it is refundable, it takes weeks and months to process the deposits which prevents scalability of services. Moreover, as the vehicles are owned by the company, heavy investments are be made in order to procure them.
Indian cities experienced an evolution in the public transportation infrastructure. But yet still, the development had less effect on the personal transportation services. This predicament led to the innovation founded by the JustRide team, who are working on an exclusive Smart Vehicle Technology (SVT) for implementing a hyperlocal service model.
Innovation Performed by Smart Vehicle Technology SVT taps into a vehicle’s electronic system and provides a real-time access to the location and performance parameters of the vehicle, ranging from tire pressure to the current load on the engine to the G-force experienced on each of the individual suspensions.
Renting a car in India is quite cumbersome as the rented vehicle must be collected from the company’s retail outlet. But when we book a vehicle from JustRide, it delivered at our doorstep.
The company is started to conduct a massive test of its in-house SVT in Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune, and Gurgaon.
Seed Capital Investment And Google Launchpad Accelerator Program
In its seed funding round, JustRide raised an undisclosed amount close to $ 800 K to a million UDS. The funding round was led by Alok Mittal (cofounder of Angel India Network), Zeeshan Hayat (CEO and cofounder of Toppr.com), Niraj Singh (founding partner of Outbox Ventures), Nikunj Jain (cofounder of Frankly.me), Anirudh Damani (Partner of Artha Energy Projects), Punit Goyal (cofounder and MD at PLG Clean Energy Projects), Rohit Chokani (Company Director at Lakshchandi Realty) and Palaash Ventures.
In 2016, JustRide raised $400,000 (around Rs 2.7 crore) in its pre-Series A funding round, reported Livemint. Dheeraj Jain, partner at Redcliffe Capital, also participated in this round. The fresh capital will be used to further develop its technology excellence and expanding footprints by inclusion of more cities.
In December 2015, the startup got $50,000 in equity-free seed funding from Google as part of being selected for the internet giant’s startup accelerator programme, Google Launchpad.
Why JustRide Leads in the CompetitionZoomcar and Carzonrent are the other car-on-rent startups from India. JustRide seems to have a technological edge with its SVT over its competitors. Unlike Carzonrent and Zoomcar, JustRide doesn’t own vehicles, hence it doesn’t require deep pocket investments like its heavily funded peers for running operations.
Apart from timely service, JustRide epitomises on customer safety. All vehicles in the fleet comply with the stringent Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards(FMVSS) of America. The entire fleet of vehicles has been equipped with essential features such as Dual Air Bags and Anti-Lock Braking System to ensure passenger safety.
According to Ken Research, the Indian car rental market revenues is growing at CAGR rate of 12.5 % and is expected to touch INR 800 billion by 2019. The growth is largely driven by increasing penetration of Internet and mobile apps.
The increment of motorization rate is leading to traffic congestion, unavailability of parking and other concerns. Car rentals offer an innovative solution to this predicament as a single car is used by multiple customers.
The Y Combinator company is to soon challenge the monopoly of Taxi aggregators as self-driven cars on hire have always been a cheaper alternative to taxis.
Guest Author
Anisha Aditya leads editorial initiatives at BW Legal, which is the legal publication of BW Businessworld. She is a Management Consultant with specialisation in International Business Strategies, assessment of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements between countries, the impact of preferential access on industries, and global value chains for private companies and governments. She has also assisted in framing state export strategies.
