JustRide raises funding to help Indians drive luxury cars at affordable prices

JustRide, a Mumbai-based car-rental aggregator, has raised funding from angel investors including Alok Mittal of Angel India Network, Zeeshan Hayat from Toppr.com, Nikunj Jain of Frankly.me, and Outbox Ventures’ Niraj Singh, among others. The funding round was announced earlier today and the amount remains undisclosed.

Coinciding with the funding round, the startup also launched its services in Bangalore, Pune and Gurgaon.

JustRide was co-founded by Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Sah, Vasant Verma, Abhishek Mahajan, and Amit Sahu last year.

The startup’s mobile and web-based platform enables its customers to transact with car-rental vendors. JustRide does not own the vehicles it rents out to its customers, it leases them from individual car rental vendors. Users who need a car can discover and book cars, including luxury cars, hyper-locally on the JustRide website. JustRide is now even including some smart tech in that allows users to check stats like tire pressure and engine load before booking a ride to be sure the car’s in good repair. And once a car has been booked, it can be delivered right to the user’s home.

JustRide says its model works by taking advantage of the high cost of vehicle maintenance and the low frequency of use required by most users. Instead of buying a car they don’t use much, users can rent a car only when they need one, which saves money.

The startup says it has acquired 700 customers and generated over 1,200 transactions in Mumbai and Bangalore since the beginning of April this year.

Going ahead, JustRide’s goal is to enable its vendors to register a fleet of cars on its tech platform. It also wants to reduce the time required for car delivery to ten minutes, once booked. By December, it also hopes to provide its service to eight more Indian cities.

Zoomcar is another online car rental service startup in India. It operates in six cities and raised US$11 million last month. It owns the cars it operates, though, so its model is different from JustRide’s. Founded in 2013, it has partnered with Ford and Mahindra and was the first car rental company to offer electric vehicles for rent.