RailYatri raises pre-Series A round of funding from Helion, Omidyar & others

Noida-based Stelling Technologies Pvt Ltd, the company behind RailYatri, a crowd-sourced platform to provide train-related travel information, has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A round of funding led by Helion Venture Partners and Omidyar Network, according to a press release.

Existing investors Blume Ventures and Ujamaa Ventures also participated in the funding.

As part of the deal, Helion Venture's managing director Rahul Chandra will join the board of the four-year-old startup.

Founded in 2011 by the trio of Manish Rathi, Kapil Raizada and Sachin Saxena, RailYatri provides a range of crowd-sourced and public content related to train travel in India, through its mobile as well as web app. It launched its mobile application in April 2014.

Additionally, it offers travel-related services such as meals delivery on train and taxi booking, and has partnerships with taxi service firms across 20 cities and food vendors across 300 stations. It also provides information about train and ticket status, besides predicting whether one's waitlisted ticket will get a confirmed birth or not.

"We believe Helion's stellar track record in the online travel segment coupled with Rahul's significant know-how in the mobile space will help us in creating a world class consumer product and build a great experience for train travelers in India," Manish Rathi said in the statement.

Rathi added that the company has aggressive growth targets and is planning to raise further capital soon.

Rail Yatri app most recently added a trip sharing feature which allows train commuters to share live location with family and friends while travelling.

It claims that it offers information for over 90,000 locations and 14,500 trains including local trains and metros. It also claims that within its first year of the launch, its Android app has crossed 1 million downloads.

The startup had initially raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding which was used to improve its technology platform and launch marketing initiatives. Later in November last year, it raised an undisclosed sum in seed funding from early-stage investor Blume Ventures. The round also saw participation from its unnamed existing investor in the US.

Helion's Rahul Chandra said, "RailYatri is the railway enquiry window in a common man's mobile but without the hassle of long queues. The company has succeeded in crowd-sourcing information and services for millions of Indian rail passengers."

Helion has in the past backed MakeMyTrip, India's top online travel agency.