August 6, 2018
Self-drive car rental start-up Zoomcar India Pvt. Ltd has raised $3.6 million (Rs 25 crore) in debt funding from Trifecta Capital, said a report in Yourstory quoting filings with Registrar of Companies (RoC).
The development comes almost six months after the Bengaluru-headquartered startup closed a $40-million Series C funding round led by automobile company Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M), part of the $19-billion Mahindra Group. Existing investors, including Ford Smart Mobility, Sequoia Capital, Empire Angels, Nokia Growth Partners and others, had also participated in that round.
At that time, Zoomcar had said that it will use the proceeds for accelerating its marketplace supply growth, improving its lead within applied IoT technologies, and expanding into additional mobility categories.
Founded in 2013 by Greg Moran and David Back, Zoomcar has raised $103.8 million in funding to date, according to Crunchbase data. The company operates a fleet of over 3,000 vehicles across 27 cities, according to its LinkedIn profile. For the fiscal year 2017, Zoomcar had recorded a revenue of Rs 121 crore.
In June, Zoomcar collaborated with Mahindra Electric, a sub-division of the Mahindra Group, to offer 50 e2oPlus electric vehicles in Pune for self-driving as well as renting.
Silicon Valley-based venture debt provider Trifecta has previously backed startups such as online fashion brand StalkBuyLove, online grocer Big Basket, online furniture store Urban Ladder, logistics services provider Rivigo, and mobile wallet company Mobikwik.
The firm is reportedly also planning to raise a second debt fund, targeting a corpus of Rs500 crore and a green shoe option of Rs250 crore, by the end of 2018. Trifecta raised Rs500 crore for its maiden debt fund and aims to fully exhaust the fund by this quarter, according to earlier media reports.
Last month, GirnarSoft, the parent company of automobile portals CarDekho.com and Gaadi.com, raised $3.6 million in debt funding from Trifecta. In February, the firm provided Rs 6 crore of venture debt to Manak Waste Management Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates Cashify, an online portal that sells used mobile phones.
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