How the Latest Venture Capital Investment could Broaden Electric Car Rentals PAN-India As per Crunchbase, the total amount of funding raised by ZoomCar in India is $100.2 million
By Rahul R
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
In a major boost to the Electric Vehicle (EV) ecosystem in India, leading self-drive car rental service ZoomCar has raised as much as $40 million in a latest Series C thereby taking its overall raised capital to more than $100 million dollars. Now, this development potentially represents a major transitional phase in the Indian automobile sector as the latest round of funding was an initiative by Mahindra & Mahindra.
As per Crunchbase, the total amount of funding raised by ZoomCar in India is $100.2 million. At this instant, it is worth noting that Mahindra has been aggressively pushing electric cars in India.
With the automobile manufacturer now having pumped in significant capital at ZoomCar, we could potentially get to witness increased electric car rentals in India courtesy ZoomCar. As of now, the self-drive car rental service offers a range of Hatchbacks, Sedans, SUVs, and Luxury cars for customers to choose from. In 2017, Zoomcar also started offering Mahindra E2O electric cabs across select Indian cities.
With the latest round of funding, ZoomCar could very well focus on the extending Mahindra's E2O electric cabs PAN-India.
Also, with Mahindra's latest investments, the automobile manufacturer potentially owns 16 per cent stake in ZoomCar. The most significant part of this development is Mahindra's focus on bettering multi-nodal urban mobility offerings.
"At Mahindra, we are playing a pioneering role in the shared mobility business and are looking forward to an impetus in it through this investment in Zoomcar. We are confident that this partnership with Zoomcar will help further our vision to transform mobility in the country, thereby creating a more connected ecosystem," stated Pawan Goenka who is Managing Director at Mahindra & Mahindra.
Previously, ZoomCar underwent eight rounds of funding, with the last round taking place during December 2016. Major investors include Sequoia Capital, Ford, and Nokia Growth Partners. The car rental service underwent Series A funding way back during October 2014. There were also two Series B funding rounds held during July and December 2016 respectively.
The above Series A round was led by Sequoia Capital, whereas the two Series B rounds were led by Ford and Cyber Carrier respectively. Here, it is worth noting that Cyber carrier is a China-based Venture Capital firm.
In other funding developments, Vivek Ravishankar founded HackerRank which connects companies to developers via coding evaluation raised $30 million in a round of Series C funding dominated by JMI Equity. With the latest funding, HackerRank has raised a total of $58 million.
