With more than 30,000 registered users, Instacar has now bagged a round of funding from Uber Cabs investor David Cohen.
InstaCar – A premium outstation cab aggregator for chauffeur driven cars – has its eyes focused on the one thing consumers want today – a good experience, not just cars. The startup, founded in 2016 and bagged Seed round of funding in the first year itself, believes that most road trips in India are ruined by common factors such as the condition of rented cars, behaviour of the driver or failure to deliver a consistent and reliable experience. In this round of funding, Instacar won an investment from David Cohen, who is also one of the first investor in Uber Cabs. This is Cohen’s second investment in a logistics and transportation startup after Uber.
“Our objective was not just to create a platform where people would book cars to go out of town. There were still some practical challenges with outstation car bookings. The drivers would turn up unkempt or their behaviour would not be to the customers. Taxis were lacking basic requirements such as roof carrier for luggage, luggage capacity to travel with 4+ passengers. We decided to solve this problem by having a very strict onboarding process for drivers and vehicles to ensure that they are easy to communicate to because in parts of India the drivers speak the local dialect and not hindi or english, which becomes a problem during outstation travel ” shares Co-founder Ishan Vyas.
“Outstation Taxi rentals is a big business. But there is a scarcity of options. You only have two large players in the market who mainly call the shots in terms of pricing, quality or the mode of booking. We believe we need to reach out to a larger percentage of people and provide the assurance of the chauffeur driven car arriving because our optimisations directly blocks a driver for the booking for the specific time and this has resulted in 100% delivery rate from our end,” adds Co-founder Priyanshi Choubey. The founders are of the firm belief that the combination of features, all at a relatively competitive price points has helped them earn more customers past year.
Missed flight? Get next flight tickets free
In a crowded taxi market, InstaCar offers interesting deals and packages to make the life of travellers easier. For instance, travellers can book airport rides throughout Bengaluru in a chauffeur-driven car in a fixed price of just Rs 999/-. This offer comes with a clause that if the customer missed the flight due to InstaCar’s delay, the startup would pay the customer a one-way flight ticket to the next destination.
Astha Shukla, a regular customer of InstaCar airport rides says “ I booked Instacar on my round trip to the airport and contrary to my idea of how much can a cab service be different, it really was a 9/10 on promptness and 10/10 on chauffeur hospitality.
Three things that InstaCar provides better than other cab services:
- Safe for solo travelling at odd hours
- Best quality car and hospitable chauffeur
- Very reasonable rates
Pick-and-drop children to school facility
Another unique feature that InstaCar offers is the pick-up and drop for the children of Expat and HNIs. “Expat parents are often worried for the safety of their children especially if they are new to the area. We offer the pick-up and drop facility for children at a fixed price irrespective of the location or distance,” shares Priyanshi.
New round of funding and growth so far
InstaCar raised an undisclosed amount of funding from investor David Cohen. InstaCar was one of the startups who got selected among the Techstars and got an opportunity to present before Cohen.
“We are grateful to Techstars team and their rigorous selection process. We learnt so much during this journey. The investor sentiments have turned around in the market after 2018 because the space is very big and the competition is low. We strongly believe that we will be able to capture a significant amount of Outstation market because the business model is unique and our experience is very consistent,” informs Ishan.
Like all other cab companies, InstaCar charges some portion of the total amount as commission but their revenues are not just limited to this. “We also charge some amount for on-boarding of the car just to make sure that the vendors attaching their cars with us have good faith from the start and to make sure that the inventory is of good quality,” adds Ishan.
“With the launch of our product and another round of funding, we are now looking to penetrate deeper into the cities where we are operating,” adds Ishan.
Why Invest in Instacar?
Ray Newal, Managing Director for Techstars India Says : “I saw a team that had immense tenacity and an unending wave of energy to hustle and get what they were chasing. Instacar figured out the pain points and played really well in terms of Unit economics. Its incredible how a company from the beginning is so customer focussed! And it has reaped great dividends for them in terms of customer retention and repeat use. These are clear signs of a great team doing a great job. I’m eager to see how they scale their business with the help of technology and improve the ride experience even further. “
Bala Girisaballa, Part of David’s team says: “Ishan and Priyanshi are quintessential entrepreneurs who are bold in their vision, yet insanely focused on execution. They take big bets in terms of trying business models that are path breaking and adapt based on what works. They are always seeking to learn from other founders and mentors. Their passion for the business is infectious and they don’t leave any stone unturned in their pursuit to know their customers and deliver delight for them.”
Why InstaCar model is to watch out for?
A customer asks for a crisp White Innova Crysta, he gets it. The team has spent a considerable amount of logistics technology and operational optimizations to minimize waiting times or offer demand predictions, offers or seasonal price predictions.
How India is an emerging market for rental cabs now?
Several predictions in the West have said before that owning cars in the near future will be an exception, not a rule anymore. Little did we know that this would also come true for a country such as India. However, there’s a large part of the urban population that has realized in the last decade the convenience of rental cabs that are a great source of transportation without maintenance cost. Tier 1 cities such as Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai and Tier 2 cities such as Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata etc attract travellers from around India. A large part of the working population doesn’t want to own assets such as house or cars since they are willing to relocate if their jobs require. As a result, rental cabs business has grown threefold since Ola began its services. InstaCar, on the other hand, has chosen the space of outstation rental cabs.
