Funding to consolidate product leadership and increase the reach
Delhi, India – June 30, 2015
RailYatri.in, the largest multi-modal train travel app in India, today announced that it raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Helion Venture Partners and Omidyar Network along with its existing investors (Blume Ventures and Ujama Ventures).
RailYatri.in, India’s largest multi-modal train travel app, today announced that it has raised an undisclosed pre-series A funding led by Helion Venture Partners along with Omidyar Network and existing investors Blume Ventures and Ujama Ventures. RailYatri.in provides a wide range of crowd-sourced decision making information over mobile related to train travel in India, including inter-city, local and metro trains. This round of funding will be used to reach out to every train traveler in India and consolidate its product leadership in the domain. Rahul Chandra, Managing Partner, Helion will join the board of the company.
Co-founded by Manish Rathi, Kapil Raizada and Sachin Saxena, RailYatri mobile app was launched in 2014 with an intent to provide real-time rail travel-related information, including, train status, platforms, seat availability predictions, facilities at stations, personalised alerts and providing access to essential travel services like meals and taxi. Its unique marketplace connects travelers to essential services such as meals delivery on train and taxi booking. Within its 1st year RailYatri Android App has crossed over 1 million downloads.
Using GPS-enabled mobile phones to track trains and proprietary prediction algorithms coupled with historical data spread over years, RailYatri today serves more than a million users on a monthly basis helping them make smart decisions.
Manish Rathi, Co-founder and CEO, RailYatri.in said, “Millions of train travelers in India make uninformed travel choices and end up spending more – on both time and money. RailYatri’s goal is to reach out to every train traveler and empower these travelers by bridging this information/services gap. Our products help travelers make smart decisions, connect with family/friends to share their travel updates and gain access to high quality travel services, all on one platform.”
On the investments, Manish said, “We are indeed pleased that our existing and new investors understand and are equally excited about building the next generation of experience for train travelers in India. Along with the investments, we believe we can now move faster in creating a world class consumer offering for the Indian travelers. We welcome Rahul Chandra from Helion Ventures to our board to represent our investors and I believe we will be a great team together.”
This investment is in consonance with Helion’s philosophy of backing mobile-first ventures coming out of India that are solving critical pain-point of consumers. Talking about the funding in RailYatri.in, Rahul Chandra of Helion said, “RailYatri is the railway enquiry window in a common man’s mobile but without the hassle of long queues. The company has succeeded in crowd-sourcing information and services for millions of Indian rail passengers. We are delighted to collaborate with RailYatri and are impressed by the founding team that comes with strong technology background and the expertise of designing and engineering scalable consumer products and services”.
On future plans, Manish said, “Having already established a clear product and thought leadership in the domain, we will continue with our mission of simplifying train travel in India by fulfilling the needs of travelers by launching newer capabilities to engage travelers and allow them to plan their trips on their own. We have aggressive growth targets and we plan to raise further capital soon”
About RailYatri.in:
Noida-based RailYatri.in was set up in 2011 with a mission to simplify train travel with Manish Rathi (VJTI, Mumbai, Western Michigan Univ,), Kapil Raizada (IIT Kanpur, IIM Bangalore) and Sachin Saxena (IIT Kharagpur, Georgia Tech, Stanford) as its co-founders. RailYatri.in launched its consumer products in early 2014 and has seen a rapid growth since then. For more information, visit www.railyatri.in
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