Cab service aggregator Meru Cabs is looking for an investment of $100 million to expand and strengthen its operations and is in discussions with several investors but no deal has been struck with anyone, according to Siddhartha Pahwa, CEO, Meru Cabs.

He also spelt out the commitment of his company to its patrons saying that as a market leader, he felt that for "anything that happens in the industry, we have some accountability and responsibility towards our passengers" (for their safety).

Asked at a news conference today held to announce launch of Meru Cabs’ service in Coimbatore about the Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba investing in his company, he said: "first of all we would not want to disclose anything about any discussions". The India Value Fund, which had already invested in Meru, had recently invested $50 million in it. He said his company viewed this category as "one of the biggest consumer categories in India". To maintain the growth momentum, Meru would require $100 million of investment for which it was "in discussion with various investors’.

Questioned as to whether Alibaba was among the investors with whom Meru was holding parleys as media reports had speculated about it, Pahwa said Alibaba was a taxi service provider in its own country China. Raising the question himself as to whether Meru would be interested to raise funds from Alibaba, he said "we will evaluate that option at this point of time".

Tracing the growth of Meru Cabs, he said the company has been growing aggressively every year. In the FY 2014-15, the company had a turnover /consumer revenue of close to ₹560 crore as against ₹424 crore in the earlier fiscal. In the current fiscal, the company intends to reach a consumer revenue of ₹1,000 crore. The funds being raised would be used to launch Meru’s services in new cities, for augmenting number of chauffeurs and to promote Meru mobile app to enhance the consumer experience. The company early this year launched Meru Eve, an exclusive cab service for women in Delhi and the experience was `very good’. Meru plans to extend this service to more cities and was in discussion in Maharashtra, Karnataka and AP. It has presence in 20 cities now and would take it to 40 cities by Dec 2015.

Asked whether the safety measures being introduced by Meru were in response to the Uber cab incident in Delhi in Dec 2014 where a woman passenger was allegedly raped by the cab driver, Pahwa said Meru launched the `Trip Tracker’ service on the Women’s Day in 2012 and the "ICE ( In Case of Emergency) Alert button’ was introduced in 2014. His company believed that `safety, transparency and reliability’ were the core issues in the industry. The drivers were put to stringent verification before they were taken on board by Meru and nearly 24 per cent of drivers who wanted to join Meru were rejected for different reasons, he said.

Answering a question as to how accountable the company felt for the behaviour of its drivers, the Meru Cabs CEO said being a leader of the industry, "we believe we have some accountability and responsibility towards our passengers’. The company has put in robust checks and balances in place to ensure that poor quality drivers were weeded out at the beginning itself. For any complaint lodged against any driver, Meru has a robust tracking and evaluation mechanism to fix the fault and action was taken if the allegation is proved. Hence, the chances of such incidents occurring were significantly lower in Meru. But if it happened, he said, Meru would take full responsibility and would provide `whatever support is required to be given either to the administration or to the passenger’ for any investigation to be done.

(It was reported that Uber US had told a court there that it could not be held legally responsible for the acts of a driver in India and wanted the case to be dismissed as the claim was filed against a wrong party).

Anil Pandey, AVP (South), Meru Cabs, said Meru with a fleet of 100 cars seeks to be the No 1 operator in the city. As the organised market was only 5 per cent of the total market, he felt there was `more room’ for everyone to be in the market but only those with superior technology and good presence in terms of network would survive.

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