India’s fastest growing intercity mobility startup, Zingbus, has announced that it has raised INR 44.6 crores as a pre-series A round led by Infoedge ventures. The round also saw participation from an impressive line of other investors from silicon valley like Funders Club, Pioneer fund, Anim Fund (Founders Fund Scout), Locus ventures, and Liquid 2 Ventures. Existing investors Advantedge technology fund, 9 Unicorns, and Venture Catalyst also invested. The company has also received backing from a clutch of value-adding angels like NFL fame Joe Montana, Alan Rutledge, John Jersin, Ankur Nagpal, Vinod Gupta, Ben McCan, and Harry Robertson among others. Founded in 2019 by Prashant Kumar, Mratunjay, and Ravi Kumar Verma, zingbus has been part of the YCombinator 2021 winter batch.
The startup aims to make safe and reliable travel accessible for everyone. It aggregates fleets of buses to deliver an end-to-end standardized intercity travel experience to its customers. Even amidst the ongoing pandemic, Zingbus has become one of the most popular bus travel brands in the country, connecting more than 100 cities and towns across the country. The freshly raised funds will be utilized to develop technology for the next leap of improvement in traveler experience and expand the service to new geographies. The startup is also hiring across engineering, product, business and operations profiles.
Talking about the funding, Prashant Kumar, CEO, Zingbus said, “We see the pandemic as a black swan event for the entire intercity bus industry. It has upended this unorganised, highly fragmented, and mainly unbranded market. The current industry dynamics are such that we find ourselves in a unique position to build something precious quickly! Pandemic has led to higher expectations of hygiene and safety from customers. Contactless, hassle-free boarding process, amongst other technology tools, has helped us fulfill this post-covid need beautifully. Once the traveler associates zingbus’s brand with safety, they prefer it over others. Simultaneously by building tools for audits, boarding, and demand management, we have been able to help struggling traditional fleet owners in coping with the operational challenges with minimum manpower investment from their side in a post lockdown world.”
“We are committed to build technology promoting safety and affordability of services and create sustainable mobility infrastructure. We are running projects which would make bus travel much more attractive for customers like door-to-door connections, value-added services, and much more. We are very thankful to get the backing of our investors who have believed in our vision and venture; with their constant support, we hope to build Zingbus a profitable, scalable and sustainable venture,” Kumar further added.
On their funding, Kitty Agarwal, Partner, Infoedge ventures, said, “We are very excited to partner with the Zingbus team in their journey to utilise technology for building a sustainable, shared mobility company delivering a consistent, high-quality experience to bus travelers in India. The team has a unique combination of tech and logistics expertise with best-in-class capital efficiency. Very few travel and mobility companies have seen strong growth with robust unit economics despite Covid disruptions, so we have immense confidence in the execution.”
