Helion Ventures & Omidyar invest in
RailYatri
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
Media Contact:
About Helion:
Helion is a multi-stage, technology
focused venture fund with over $600 million under management. Helion invests in
technology and technology-powered businesses such as eCommerce, online
services, mobility, enterprise software and outsourcing. Founded in 2006,
Helion has over fifty portfolio companies and has backed companies like
MakeMyTrip, RedBus, TaxiForSure, YepMe, Ezetap and others. Helion has its
offices in Bangalore, Gurgaon (NCR) and Silicon Valley. For more information,
visithttp://www.helionvc.com/
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