Self Drive Car Rental Startup JustRide Raises $2 Mn

Mumbai-based self-drive car rentals aggregator, JustRide, has raised a funding of $2 Mn (INR 13.3 Cr.), confirms Vasant Verma, COO & co-founder, JustRide.

JustRide was founded in April 2015 by Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, Vasant Verma, Abhishek Mahajan and Amit Sahu. As a technology oriented aggregator enterprise, JustRide’s focus lies in connecting existing vendors in the car rental industry to the end user through a hyperlocal service network. It is not merely about renting cars.

As an aggregator, the company’s business model does not require any investment in cars — these are leased from individual vendors. Customers can book cars through the JustRide website or mobile app. The company aims to deliver vehicles within half an hour of booking at various locations.

At its inception,, the company had started with just eight cars. Now it has about 350 cars for hire. Currently, JustRide is adding around 150 cars per month, and expects to reach 10,000 vehicles in two years, said Hemant Kumar Sah, co-founder & CTO.

The startup has a customer base of about 20,000, and does about 200 transactions a day. Its services are operational in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Bangalore, and has plans to expand to 12 other cities.

JustRide’s Innovation

• Smart Vehicle Technology (SVT) taps into the vehicle’s electronic system and provides a real-time data, ranging from tyre pressure to the current load on the engine and the G force experienced on each of the individual suspensions.
• The implementation of SVT negates the requirement of high security deposits as the vehicles are under 24×7 surveillance and can be stalled from a remote location if needed.
• The company is currently conducting a massive test for its in-house Smart Vehicle Technology (SVT) in Mumbai, Bangalore, Pune and Gurgaon.
• The SVT taps into the car’s electronic systems and provides a continuous stream of data on various parameters, including location, speed, performance of the vehicle, and quality of driving. The SVT has obviated the need for a high security deposit, since the cars are tracked continuously, Hemant said. The security deposit has therefore been fixed at INR 999.

Traffic tends to peak during weekends and the vehicles typically see 90% utilisation, Hemant said.

Once the technology is fully deployed across all cars and the findings analysed, it will be possible to provide customised offers to hirers based on their driving track-record.

So, a good driver may get a discount on the rentals for subsequent trips while a poor or bad driver may even be rejected.

Earlier this month, JustRide had raised an undisclosed amount of angel investment from industry veterans like Alok Mittal, Zishaan Hayath, Niraj Singh, Nikunj Jain, among others.

JustRide indirectly competes with taxi aggregators and ridesharing startups like – Olacabs, Uber, Tripda, BlaBlaCar, LetsRide and Zify.

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