Shared mobility startup Quick Ride has raised Rs 100.78 crore ($14.3 million) from South African technology conglomerate Naspers and venture capital firms Sequoia Capital India and Venture Highway as part of its Series B round of funding, according to a media report.
Naspers alone brought in Rs 57.61 crore (around $8 million), Inc42 reported citing filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Sequoia invested Rs 25.2 crore and the remaining was pooled in by Venture Highway.
Quick Ride, which is operated by iDisha Info Labs Pvt. Ltd, had raised its Series A round from the same set of investors.
Ashutosh Sharma of Naspers has been appointed as director and Priya Mohan of Venture Highway has been appointed as an observer on the board of Quick Ride.
The startup, which was launched in 2015 by KNM Rao (chief executive officer) and Shobhana Sriram (chief technology officer), provides a mobile app that enables users to find options for carpooling and bikepooling in real time.
It currently has a presence in nine cities -- Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Kolkata.
Prior to launching the company, co-founders Rao and Sriram worked with Huawei. Naveen Mamgain joined in 2018 as co-founder and design head while Vishal Lavti also joined the same year as co-founder and vice president.
Investors
Naspers has been one of the most prolific technology investors in India.
The South African conglomerate led an investment of $540 million in ed-tech startup Byju's in December last year. In the same month, it led a $1 billion investment in food-tech unicorn Swiggy to mark one of the single-largest infusions into an Indian startup.
In May last year, Naspers harvested more than $2 billion by exiting its six-year-old bet on Flipkart after the e-commerce giant was acquired by Walmart.
As for Sequoia Capital India, it closed its sixth fund at $695 million to invest in early- and growth-stage companies in the country and Southeast Asia, where it has made over 200 bets on startups.
It is also an investor in ride-hailing unicorn Ola and dockless scooter-sharing platform Bounce.
Venture Highway is an India- and Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund founded by former Google executive Samir Sood and advised by Neeraj Arora, who recently quit as global business head at WhatsApp.
Its portfolio companies include digital gaming startup Mobile Premier League, vernacular social networking firm ShareChat, cybersecurity services provider ShieldSquare, med-tech company SigTuple, business-to-business (B2B) marketplace Moglix and social commerce venture Meesho.