Gurgaon-based Green House Ventures (GHV) accelerator has selected online taxi booking platform, My Taxi India (MTI) for its 12-month accelerator program.
The selected startup will be prepared by GHV for next round of funding and speed up My Taxi India’s growth. Further which the startup will receive seed funding of $100K from GHV in exchange of 20% equity.
Launched in 2012, by Anshuman Mihir, Mohit Rajpal and Satyakam Rahul, My Taxi India operates in the car rental space offering intra and inter-city travel for personal and business requirements including transportation for corporate travellers and travel agents. With a fleet size of 4,000 taxis running 24×7 across 102 cities, it facilitates bookings for tempo travellers as well.
My Taxi India has plans to expand its operations to 125 cities with one lakh active app users by March 2016.
Commenting on the development, Anshuman Mihir CEO and founder, My Taxi India said, “Although we are profitable, we were missing key business metrics and struggling to raise institutional funding to scale up our operations. Now that we are selected for GHV’s accelerator programme, we will use the funds to expand to other cities, scale up our operations and launch a native mobile app within few months.”
He added that unlike other online car rental companies, My Taxi India has adopted the affiliate business model where it works with on-board taxi fleet operators across the country. “The company aims at a considerable share of Indian car rental market which is pegged at $9 Bn, of which only 4-6% is organised.”
India’s taxi market, which is pegged at $9 Bn, is fragmented into $500 Mn organized and $8.5 Bn unorganized market. The organized segment consists of –
- Car rental players like Zoomcar, carzonet and Meru cabs
- Aggregators like, Uber, Taxiforsure and Ola
- and Affliators, which are associated with car rental agencies and offer various deal or packages, like Savaari and Taxiguide.in
Though at nascent stage the organized taxi market has seen frantic investor’s activity in past few years. Recently, car rental venture Zoomcar raised $5 Mn and Meru raised $50 Mn in the car rental segment.
Vikram Upadhyaya, Chief Mentor & Accelerator Evangelist at GHV said, “Frugality is the essence of My Taxi India’s business model, in the Intracity and Intercity taxi market space. Their team comes with relevant skill sets and background in the industry. With GHV’s acceleration program, along with their team’s capability, I believe they can start unfolding a huge untapped market opportunity in an unorganised industry. Despite being bootstrapped the company has a different business model to offer car rental services for intercity travel across.”
GHV is a progressive business accelerator for entrepreneurs and a catalyzing resource for innovators and new ventures. It provides startups with a controlled environment and appropriate optimized resource along with sustainability funding to grow multifold in a shorter timeframe. GHV’s model of acceleration is designed to help companies ramp up growth, focus on scale, shorten time to get VC funding, and attract higher valuation.
Prior to this, GHV had selected LazyLad, a startup that connects customers with nearby and local retailers who can upload and update their inventory on the platform, for its accelerator programme.
Besides, GHV partnered with online funding platform LetsVenture to provide easier access to capital for early stage startups, Japan-based venture capital fund World Innovation Labs, which invests in disruptive startups with global appeal and NASSCOM’s 10000 startups initiative. GHV’s mentor panel includes eminent personalities like Google’s Rajan Anandan, iSpirt’s Co-founder Sharad Sharma and Rehan Yar Khan of Orios Venture Partners.
