NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

At a time when ride hailing services such as Ola and Uber are rolling out offers to dissuade consumers from using personal vehicles, DriveU, an on-demand driver provider launched by an early backer of TaxiForSure, has raised about $1 million from Unitus Seed Fund and undisclosed angel investors from the Silicon Valley, said co-founder and chief executive Rahm Shastry.

Interestingly, to thrive as a business, DriveU will need car owners to frequently use their vehicles, which is in contrast to the so-called unicorns Ola and Uber’s philosophy of foregoing usage of personal vehicles.

DriveU, run by Humble Mobile Solutions Pvt. Ltd, was launched in June 2015 by Rahm Shastry, his son Ashok and Amulmeet Singh, a former RedBus and Freecharge executive. Rahm Shastry was one of the early backers of ride hailing service TaxiForSure, which was bought by rival Ola for $200 million in March last year.

The company, which is operational in Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi, claims to have facilitated close to 20,000 trips since inception, growing at 50% every month. It has roped in about 250 drivers, about two-third of them on a full-time basis and the rest being part-timers. DriveU gets 60% of its bookings from repeat customers, said chief executive Rahm Shastry.