Self-drive car rentals aggregator JustRide is on the fast track. Starting with just eight cars in April this year, the company now offers about 350 cars on hire.

The start-up is adding about 150 cars per month at present, and expects to touch 10,000 vehicles in two years, co-founder and CTO Hemant Kumar Sah said. The company, which currently operates in Mumbai, Pune, Delhi and Bengaluru, plans to expand to 12 cities soon.

JustRide, which had earlier raised seed funding of ₹4 crore, has now raised bridge funding of $2 million (₹13.3 crore). It is now on the lookout to raise Series A funding. The fresh capital will be used to develop its technology backbone — the ‘Smart Vehicle Technology’, or SVT.

As an aggregator, the company’s business model does not require any investment in cars — these are leased from individual vendors. Customers can book the cars for rent through the JustRide website or mobile app. The company aims to deliver vehicles within half an hour of booking at various locations.

The company was co-founded by five young entrepreneurs, who are alumni of NIT-Allahabad and IIT-Powai.

Smart technology

The SVT taps into the car’s electronic systems and provides a continuous stream of data on various parameters, including location, speed, performance of the vehicle, and quality of driving. The SVT has obviated the need for a high security deposit, since the cars are tracked continuously, Hemant said. The security deposit has therefore been fixed at Rs ₹999.

Once the technology is fully deployed across all cars and the findings analysed, it will be possible to provide customised offers to hirers based on their driving track-record.

So, a good driver may get a discount on the rentals for subsequent trips while a poor or bad driver may even be rejected. The company at present has a customer base of about 20,000, and makes about 200 transactions a day.

Traffic tends to peak during weekends and the vehicles typically see 90 per cent utilisation, Hemant said. The average customer is young (25-28 years of age), tech savvy and just setting out on his or her career, he added.

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