Thursday, March 28

Mobility Sharing Firm Drivezy Secures $20 million

India’s mobility sharing platform Drivezy has secured funds amounting to $20 million Series B financing round. The particular round was led by existing investor Das Capital.

The round also saw participation from backers like automotive giant Yamaha, Axan Partners and IT-Farm. With this funding, the total amount of funds the company has raised so far reaches $31 million.

Along with this, the startup has also inked a $100 million asset financing deal backed by Japan’s AnyPay, which will see new cars and motorbikes added to Drivezy’s fleet over the next year.

Initially, the company was known as JustRide. It claims to have a fleet of around 8,000 vehicles that includes 5,000 two-wheelers (motorbikes and scooters) and 3,000 cars, which probably attracts around 37,000 customers every month.

Abhishek Mahajan, the co-founder of the company stated that the fleet should add a further 50,000-60,000 new vehicles, 75 percent of which would be two-wheelers, thanks to the AnyPay deal. He also mentioned that Drivezy is currently market leader when it comes to self-drive two-wheelers.

“When we fast-forward five years, we can’t imagine a scenario that car ownership in India goes from eight percent [right now] to U.S. level of 80 percent. India will have to skip a cycle on the culture of ownership and move into a sustainable sharing of cars model,” he added.

Talking about the company, Drivezy uses peer-to-peer and dealership partners for its fleet. The peer-to-peer appeal centers around increasing the utility of vehicles.

As of now, the startup has no plan to move overseas, however, it mentioned that markets like Southeast Asia could become expansion targets in the future, once the India business is more developed.