Hyderabad-based transportation technology startup WhistleDrive has raised a series A funding of Rs 5 crore from Colosseum Group. The startup provides an end-to-end automated employee transportation solution for corporates along with a driver-on-demand solution for car owners.
With technology being its core strength, the funds raised will be used by WhistleDrive for hiring and to scale up its sales and operations.
WhistleDrive was founded in 2017 by Rakesh Munnanooru. With employee transportation service becoming expensive and inefficient for many companies, WhistleDrive has built an AI-based transportation solution, which comes with end-to-end automation eliminating the need for manual work.
“You just enter the employee shift and location data into the system and our software automatically forms employee clusters (typically of 4-7 members depending on the type of cabs used), creates routes, assigns cabs and schedules the pick-ups and drops,” Rakesh says.
It has a mobile app for drivers with the option of live tracking to pick up and drop employees. This is further monitored by admins on a dashboard.
The solution also has system alerts for delays, over speeding, route deviation and too much idle time, which helps act on any issue instantly. WhistleDrive’s operation team constantly monitors all cabs across all clients to be able to detect errors in real-time.
“We also have a strict on boarding process for cabs which ensures compliance and security. As of today, we are transporting about 2600 employees every day in our cabs in Hyderabad,” Rakesh adds.
WhistleDrive also provides temporary drivers on an hourly pricing model.
WhistleDrive is currently doing 75-125 rides a day and has a base of 5000+ car owners in the city. Rakesh adds that 66% of its customers are women and most of them book very frequently because of the convenience and ease of use.
WhistleDrive got incubated by Colosseum Group, an investment firm based out of Chicago at their office in Kondapur towards the end of 2017. Registering a robust growth in Q1, the startup is currently seeing revenues of Rs 2.4 Crore and has already turned operationally profitable.
Going forward, it is looking at entering five more metro markets by Q4 this year. The idea is to have a strong presence in 2 other cities by the end of 2018. The startup has also been selected for Lab 32 incubation program at T-Hub. Lab 32 is T-Hub’s flagship incubation program being launched in May.
“This six-month long program is designed to help companies gain international visibility along with mentors from the startup ecosystem. We believe that this will help us a lot to gain more traction and accelerate our growth even further,” Rakesh says.