5 startups scaling up in India

Photo credit: Subramanya Prasad

Cars, cabs, and peer rentals. Oh my! A car classifieds site won bragging rights to the second-largest investment in an Indian listings startup today. An early stage venture capital fund opened its books, and a former Amazon engineer won favor in his request to get your neighbors to rent you their stuff. Meanwhile, travel procrastinators and job seekers also have reasons to rejoice today, as we bring you five startups that are swimming in investor money.

CarTrade

Mumbai-based car classifieds site CarTrade bagged US$145 million in an undisclosed funding round from investors, including Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings, US venture capital company March Capital, and Warburg Pincus, which has previously participated in investment rounds for the web portal.

Customers using CarTrade can buy and sell new and used vehicles. It also offers consumer review and comparison services, as well as automobile news. Founded in 2009 by Rajan Mehra and Vinay Sanghi, the site has since become one of India’s largest auto classifieds center since its acquisition of competitor CarWale from German media company Axel Springer in November last year.

Competitor CarDekho acquired car and bike classifieds site Zigwheels in September of last year.

See: In the Indian Grand Prix for used cars, one startup just zoomed ahead

Roder

Early stage venture capital fund Unicorn India Ventures made its first investment today, a US$239,000 funding boost in cab aggregator startup Roder. Unicorn was joined by a small group of investors.

Roder, which launched in December 2014, was founded by IIT Kharagpur alumni Abhishek Negi, Ashish Rajput, and Siddhant Matre. They had had a bad experience paying more for the distance traveled, dealing with badly behaved drivers, and booking a cab for outstation travel.

Some of the cab fleet are owned by Roder, and some are driver-owned. Their goal is to charge the customer only based on the distance traveled.

“We have seen startups grow rapidly in the intra-city cab booking space and the convenience it has brought in our lives,” Unicorn’s managing partner Bhaskar Majumdar said in a statement. “We believe Roder can bring the same convenience to customers who currently have to shell out two way tariff for traveling from one city to the other.”

The taxi-hailing service available via an Android app, its website, and call center, is currently present in 13 cities.

“We have raised this seed funding round, which is led by Unicorn, to foray into 20 new cities in [the] north and western [regions] of the country and bring a completely hassle-free travel experience for the customers there,” said Abhishek in a statement.

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