Jugnoo, the auto-rickshaw aggregator service raised another $10 million from the e-commerce and digital wallet Paytm in series B round of fundraising. The Chandigarh-based start-up raised $10 million in a Series-B1 round from Vishal Shekhar-Sharma led company last October.

Image: Auto Rickshaw by dwimalu/ CC BY 2.0)

The auto-rickshaw hailing and hyperlocal delivery mobile app received 5 million from Paytm and remaining from the existing investors like Snow Leopard and a new one named Rocketship.vc. The aggregator operates in more than 30 cities and 11 villages across the country. It faces stiff competition from Softbank-backed Ola which has crawled to overall 24 cities in total. This move is an incentive to draw more auto-rickshaw drivers and keep them. It also targets on planning expansion.

“We have been receiving a phenomenal response from drivers who are now readily adopting technology as a means of increasing their daily earnings. We will invest these funds in improving our driver efficiency and increasing our numbers in cities where we are currently in the growing phase. And with the kind of impact we have been able to make at the grass roots, I am sure we have a long way to go,”

said Samar Singla, chief executive officer and co-founder, Jugnoo.

Paytm Senior Vice President Visareddy expressed that the aggregator service has picked up a lot of traction with this business model and creating disruption in public transportation ecosystem.

“With further infusion of funds, Jugnoo will be equipped to scale up its operations across the country and Paytm is happy to be a part of its growth story,”

With this investment, Paytm has got exposure to online aggregator businesses as well. The company has businesses in digital and e-commerce wallet and has been awarded a payment bank licence by Reserve Bank of India.

According to industry numbers, in 2016 year-to-date (YTD), there have been 22 venture capital (VC) funding rounds in India’s internet market, of which only five rounds have been Series-A/B.

“The rest have been either seed/venture stage or big-ticket late-stage funding rounds in more established companies. There were no Series-A/B rounds in the month of March. The quantum of money that has flowed in YTD still remains strong at a billion dollars, helped by large $100-million plus funding rounds, each for CarTrade, Shopclues, Snapdeal and Bigbasket,”

Morgan Stanley said in a recent report.

Source: Business Standard

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Jugnoo, the on demand auto rickshaw aggregator has raised $5.5 million (approx. 37.5 crore) in series-B round led by Paytm with participation from Snow Leopard. In November last year, Jugnoo had raised $3 million in the first slice of this funding followed by $2.5 million adding up to a series-B round of $5.5 million. Previously it has raised $5 million in series A funding in May and $1 million before that.

Chandigarh based auto rickshaw aggregator Jugnoo was founded by Chinmay Agarwal and Samar Singla in 2014. It operates in 22 cities and will expand to more parts of the country using the funds. The funds will also be used in setting up new offices, incentivise and reward the drivers and ramp up marketing activities.

While there are multiple companies operating in the auto aggregator space, the scale of most of them doesn’t pose any real threat to Jugnoo. However things are slightly different if we take the cab aggregators in equation. Ola allows its users to book auto rickshaws through its app. Uber also offers the option to book auto rickshaws through its app in many regions. Both Uber and Ola have got a strong user base and are constantly adding new cities to their list.

Jugnoo is likely to look at entering new cities before the cab aggregators to have a head start and build user base. Aggressive promotion will also be required to catalyse the process. Jugnoo is not only offering auto rickshaws for local travel but also using them for hyperlocal delivery services. With Jugnoo gearing up to surge ahead, it will be interesting to see how things turn out in the auto aggregator segment and how the smaller local players respond to that.

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ixigo’s cab aggregation app ‘ixigo cabs’ has taken the app world by storm. Available on Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store, ‘ixigo cabs’ has emerged as one of the fastest growing player in the category with over 200K app downloads in a time period of six months.

Over a short span of time, ixigo has partnered with more than 10 such app-based taxi and auto-providers across 150 cities in India. As a cab-rental aggregator, ixigo cabs helps travellers look up cabs on multiple platforms at the same time simplifying the process for travellers and allowing them to book low-priced cabs. Few popular cab-rental brands that are available in the app are Uber, Ola, Meru and Jugnoo. Interested travellers can search the cabs with details like fares, ETAs and surge pricing.

Commenting on the same, Alok Bajpai, co-founder and CEO of ixigo, stated:

“Cabs is our fastest growing category with over 200% QoQ growth without any marketing spend. We are now the clear market leaders in the cabs meta-search space, topping 1000 rides per day on app based providers and another 1000 calls per day to offline taxi companies for half-day & full-day hires. We expect to triple these numbers by March.”

One of the key reasons to the rapid growth of ixigo as a brand is the integration of ixigo cabs in two of its mobile apps viz ‘ixigo flights & hotels’ and ‘ixigo trains’. Due to this integration, it has a reach of over 8 million travellers. ixigo also launched its services on Micromax and Yu devices as an exclusive part of the ‘Around Yu’ product offering.

To expand its business network, ixigo has recently associated with many travel firms. It has partnered with BlaBlaCar for inter-city ride-sharing service and acquired Rutogo – the leading inter-city cabs aggregator of India. Elaborating on the same, Venus Dhuria, Business Head of ixigo Cabs, quoted:

“The total market size of the Indian taxi industry is approximately $9 billion. Out of this, nearly $1 billion is organized and $8 billion is still an unorganized market. There are about 2.5 million taxis across India of which around 0.6 million are in the organized intra-city space while the rest are in the unorganized space, mostly running on inter-city routes. We will deepen our partnerships with established app-based cab providers and will also work with select reputed taxi vendors and fleet owners in the inter-city market to serve our travellers who already look at cabs as an alternative to trains and buses on short and medium distance routes.”

With this year coming to an end, ixigo has outperformed many of its competitors in the travel industry. How successful will it be in the coming year is yet to be seen.

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