Bangalore-based DriveU, which connects chauffeurs with private car owners over a mobile marketplace, has acquired rival Zuver in an all-equity deal, a company statement said.
Zuver’s founders, Sovin Hegde and Sidhanth Mally, will join DriveU to focus on driver aggregation for the car rental/lease and service station verticals, the press note added.
A Harvard Business School alumnus, Hegde previously worked at construction material firm Octamec Engineering Ltd as vice president of sales and subsequently served as its director. Mally is an alumnus of King’s College, London and has previously worked as associate consultant at Cedar Management Consulting International LLC, a US-based consulting and analytics firm.
This is DriveU’s third acquisition so far. It has already consolidated two startups operating in the same niche over the last one year or so. In May, it bought out its Chennai-based rival DriversKart. It had acquired Gurgaon-based on-demand driver provider CallAtHome a year ago.
The acquisitions have strengthened DriveU’s geographical reach and the company now operates in six metros, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Pune and Hyderabad.
Owned and operated by Jobbie Services India Pvt. Ltd, Zuver provides drivers on demand through a mobile app, but caters primarily to the business segment. It connects car-owners with drivers through on-demand and monthly subscription models. The company claims to complete over 8,000 trips every month in the business-to-business segment. Launched in January 2016, the startup was earlier known as Qwikdryver.
The company had raised Rs 1.2 crore ($180,000) in angel funding from Shruth & Smith Group of Bangalore and Pune’s Hermes Group.
“Zuver has been very successful with car dealerships, service stations and car rental/leasing companies in Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru. With this acquisition, DriveU will leverage Zuver’s strong suite to cater to customers across major metros that we operate in today,†said Ashok Shastry, co-founder and chief operating officer at DriveU.
DriveU, run by Humble Mobile Solutions Pvt. Ltd, was founded in July 2015 by Ramprasad Rahm Shastry, Ashok Shastry, and Amulmeet Singh. Rahm Shastry was the first angel investor at TaxiForSure and has also founded and exited a few technology-based firms. Ashok Shastry is a California State University alumnus. Prior to co-founding DriveU, he worked at TaxiForSure in marketing and operational roles. Singh, who is the chief product officer at DriveU, earlier worked with FreeCharge, redBus and ZipDial.
In March 2016, DriveU secured an undisclosed amount from Unitus Seed Fund.
