Taxi aggregator Carzonrent Acquires GSF Backed Ride Sharing Startup RidingO

Delhi-based cab taxi aggregator company Carzonrent has acquired Bangalore based ride sharing startup RindingO. Two year old RindingO was started by Srivatsan Mohan, engineer with HP R&D and Vardhan Koshal, ex-employee of analytics startup Marketilligent, Vardhan Koshal. The startup has been backed by GSF and Sol Primero.

Ridingo connects car owners to people looking for a ride, currently, it has over 8,500 registered users in Bengaluru, and as per the company it enables over 400 trips per day. On the other side, Carzonrent offers cabs under the brand names EasyCabs for regular cab services, Carzonrent for limousine services and Myles for selfdrive options.

“The experience has been adventurous, with a firm learning that any behaviour changing initiative takes huge efforts and resources. We are lucky to get such a great opportunity where we will now be able to focus completely on products with all resources that should be required for such an effort,” Vardhan Koshal told Inc42.

The financial terms of the deal has been left undisclosed for now. With this acquisition, now Carzonrent will enter into ridesharing space and further expects to take it to over 75% of its total business in the next five years.

Rajiv K Vij, MD & CEO, Carzonrent, said: “The biggest opportunity in personal ground transportation in coming years, will be in building a shared ecosystem— help car owners to use their assets with others. Ridingo helps us get there.”

According to reports, Carzonrent is also in talks with private equity players to raise about $75 Mn for expansion and further has plans to go public in the next two years.

The market size of the cab booking industry in India is estimated to be roughly INR 14000 Cr., thus providing room for various players in this segment.

Players like Zify, Tripda, BlaBlaCar, Letsride also operate in this space.