Zoomcar, the self-driven car ride service has just received funding to the tune of Rs. 160 crores. The venture capital endorser is none other than Ford Smart Mobility, a firm that forms a part of the Ford Motor Company. Greg Moran, CEO of Zoomcar said of the funding by Ford: “With this capital we plan on expanding our Zoomcar Associate Program (ZAP) which allows users to buy cars registered in the name of Zoomcar”. They plan on owning 2000 cars on the road by early 2017.
At the moment, Zoomcar operates in six of India’s major cities – Bengaluru (also its founding city), New Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata and the National Capital Region (NCR). Since its inception in 2011, Zoomcar had raised over $11 million in funding, including $8 million from renowned venture capital company, Sequoia Capital. The car rental company was founded by David Back and Greg Moran in Bengaluru.
Earlier, Moran has said that the amount they received was enough to carry on and that he and his co-founder were not looking to expand further. However, those plans seem to have changed, as with the addition of more cars owned by Zoomcar on the roads next year, the company looks to spread across 10-15 cities. Even though Ford Smart Mobility has pumped in funds, Sequoia Capital is still the largest stakeholder for Zoomcar. Now that David Back has backed out of the company he helped build, he too still remains as a significant holder.
Zoomcar has also been creating in-house software and hardware to help monitor data on a real-time basis with regard to vehicle performance as well as usage and driving. On that topic Moran says: “Some of it is from the OEM while the rest is proprietary system which we use to monitor the drivers. We can look at a system which incentivises good drivers”.
