Drivezy (1) is in talks with an undisclosed Middle East sovereign funds and Shell Ventures. As the reports suggest, the deal is in the final stage with the middle eastern funds and already sealed with Shell Ventures. Notably, several eastern funds are eyeing Indian startups to expand into the market.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its resultant lockdown hit the mobility segment across India. The shared mobility firms came to halted by 95% during the nationwide lockdown between March. 25 to May 30. As per the sources, the Zoomcar has managed to get 15% of business back on track Month-on-Month since June. The company has also propelled Zoom Mobility Stack (ZMS) to manage the fleet, realtime user behavior, and tracking the vehicles.
Drivezy has launched a franchise model to stay adrift, as its core business offerings had a downward trend during the pandemic. With this model in place, the firm has accomplished trimming down its cash burn to 48 Lakh INR per month and reducing its operational costs. The startup now expects to break even by the end of the financial year 2021.
The Growth Story of Drivezy
Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Vasant Verma, Hemant Kumar Sah, Amit Sahu, and Abhishek Mahajan founded Drivezy in 2015. The startup gives bike and car-sharing service, peer-to-peer. At present, the benefits of Drivezy is available in 11 cities across India. It has a fleet of over 17,000 scooters and cars on its platform. Individual owners of the vehicles can list their idle cars, bikes, and scooters on the app and make money via renting their wheels to customers.
In March 2019, the firm had raised 35 million USD in equity funds and 128 million USD in assets. In November 2018, the firm had secured 20 million USD in Series B equity fundraise from Das Capital, its existing investor. Drivezy had also received 100 million USD in part of its asset financing deal. The company plan to utilize the tranche to induct more than 50,000 vehicles on its platform.
