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Hyderabad-based employee transportation startup, Commut, has acquired app-based cab service company H2O Cabs for an undisclosed amount. The deal is done in a bid to strengthen Commut’s verticals and increase its current foothold in the market.
Founded in 2015 by Prasanth Garapati, Hemanth Jonnalagadda and Sandeep Kachavarapu, Commut is a technology-based minibus shuttle service for daily office commuters. It enables the users to book a ride from a specific pickup to a specific drop point. It currently has 35 minibuses running on 50 routes.
On the other hand, H2O Cabs is an app-based cab service, founded in 2014 by Tejasri Darsi. It offers point to point cab service on fixed routes in Hyderabad, and lets users book a seat in A/C, Wi-Fi enabled cabs. Currently, it has about 1,000 registered users.
Post acquisition, H2O Founder Tejasi will be handling sales and partnerships of Commut. She said, “Commut has a great team and mentors who are highly experienced in the transportation industry to guide us build a great business. It took no time for me to be one among the team and we hope to build a sustainable company which solves real problem of commuters in the country and also help reduce carbon footprint.”
With over 500 users everyday, in a span of 4 months since inception, Commut has served over 17,000 bookings till date and has over 5000 users registered on its platform.
Prior to this, Pune-based social commute platform for ride-sharing, Cloudacar, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Amit Choudhary, Snapdeal’s Senior VP (Corporate Finance) and Anuj Puri, chairman real estate services firm JLL India. Sumit Goyal, chief financial officer of Coca-Cola, Nepal also participated in the round.
Other Cab-hailing service providers include, Ola, Uber, Brazil-based Tripda, and France-based BlaBlaCar. Other startups in the car-pooling space include PoolCircle, Let’s Ride, Ryde, etc.
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