Type Private Headquarters Bengaluru, India | Industry Car rental, Transport | |
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Founded April 2015 (2015-04)
Mumbai, India Area served Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune Key people Justin Kan (investor), Anupam Mittal (investor) Founders Hemant Sah, Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Abhishek Mahajan, Vasant Verma, Amit Sahu | ||
Justride the future of self drive rentals
JustRide is a technology aggregator in the business of self-drive car rentals, headquartered in the city of Bangalore, Karanataka. As of December 2015, the company operated 350 vehicles on it platform with services in 4 cities across India including Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune. JustRide was one of the 3 Indian companies selected by Y Combinator for the 2016 summer batch.
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Meet abhishek mahajan co founder justride on super
Establishment
JustRide was founded in April 2015 by Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Sah, Vasant Verma and Amit Sahu, all alumni of Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad and Abhishek Mahajan of Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. The company was conceptualised when Ashwarya and his friends lost their newly purchased Ford Figo in an unfortunate accident. Starting off as a luxury car rental service with 8 cars, JustRide soon adopted the aggregator model to scale operations.
Funding
In April 2015, JustRide secured a seed funding of $ 1million from eminent Indian entrepreneurs Anupam Mittal and Alok Mittal. In December 2015 Google invested $50,000 through its Launchpad Accelerator program as equity free seed funding. JustRide raised a pre-series A round of $400,000 from Redcliffe Partners in February, 2016. In November 2016, the company raised $3 million in a bridge round from a group of global investors.
Growth
JustRide commenced country wide services in August with simultaneous launches in Bangalore, Pune and Gurgaon. Services were launched in Noida and Navi Mumbai in October. In the same month the company commenced testing its in-house Smart Vehicle Technology (SVT) which taps into a car's OBD system and provides real time updates on the vehicle's location and performance parameters ranging from fuel consumption, tyre pressure to the g-force experienced by car's suspension. JustRide was selected by Google for the maiden batch of the Launchpad Accelerator program in January 2016. Through the event Google aims to provide mentorship and funding to promising startups in India, Brazil and Indonesia and assist them in scaling their business. As part of the program, participating companies received $50,000 equity free seed funding. Google had also announced $250,000 as assistance in terms of access to the company's platforms such as Adwords.
JustRide was selected by the American startup accelerator Y Combinator for the 2016 summer batch. JustRide was one of the 44 startups that presented on the Day 1 of the YC Demo on 23 August 2016.
Car Sharing
JustRide is primarily a car sharing platform where customers can rent cars on an hourly or daily basis. The company aggregates cars from licensed operators which it classifies as vendors. In July 2016, the company announced the launch of a peer-to-peer car sharing platform which let individual owners rent their vehicles to urban commuters.
Cab Leasing
JustRide is piloting the concept of renting cars to drivers who wish to partner with transportation network companies like Uber and Ola cabs in the cities of Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune. Drivers who wish to drive a cab but don't have the financial resources to purchase their own vehicle can hire a car with JustRide on an hourly basis and drive for one of the cab networks.
Smart Vehicle Technology
Smart Vehicle Technology or SVT in short is an in-house product developed by JustRide for the purpose of scaling the company's car sharing business. SVT makes use of a car's on-board diagnostics (OBD) and Global Positioning System to relay performance parameters such as tyre pressure, fuel consumption and vehicle location to a central server. The data is used to keep track of vehicles and schedule repairs accordingly.
Management and staff
JustRide's founding team serves as the key managerial staff for the company; Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer; Abhishek Mahajan, Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer; Hemant Sah, Chief Technology Officer; Vasant Verma, Chief Operating Officer and head of marketing and Amit Sahu, head of research and development and supply chain.
In February 2016, Bharat Palani Nathan, who previously served as the COO with business rival Zoomcar joined JustRide as executive director of operations.
Location and headquarters
The company is headquartered in Bangalore and has operational offices in Mumbai and Pune.
Business model
JustRide is a marketplace platform where car rental operators with a rent-a-cab license can on-board their vehicles. The company rents cars to its customers without owning any cars itself. As of December 2015, JustRide hosted 350 cars from 16 vendors. The company operates on a sale and lease back model which is similar to the Indian low-cost airline Indigo.