Exclusive: Vahanalytics raises seed funding from Venture Catalysts

Vahanalytics, a tech-driven startup which analyses the driving behaviour of Indians, has raised $200,000 (around Rs 1.3 crore) in a seed funding round from Venture Catalysts, led by Anirudh Damani, partner at Arth India Ventures and Vikram Lakhotia, managing director of Standard Transport Corporation.

"Data analytics in transportation using telematics is the need of the hour. The space is extremely exciting and opens the door to almost limitless possibilities," Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, c0-founder, Venture Catalysts, told TechCircle.in.

Mumbai-based Vahanalytics, run by Urbtranz Technologies Pvt. Ltd, was founded by BITS Pilani alumni Shivalik Sen, Arun Gandhi, Nikhil Tavora and Someshwar Dash in early 2016. The founders had earlier founded Driven, a startup that provided on-demand chauffeurs, which was sold to Chennai-based rival DriversKart earlier this month. It is now using its learnings from Driven in its new startup.

"We started out as an on-demand driver service, but soon realised that there was a distinct lack of a similar scientific metric to quantify and judge driving behaviour as well as to identify and train drivers. Our analytical tool could have a number of use-cases across industries such as transportation, logistics and insurance," said Sen.

The platform captures real-time data about driving habits and road conditions using smartphones, which is then processed and refined by leveraging the power of big data in order to extract useful insights.

Several startups have managed to raise funding in the data analytics segment. Last month, ActOnMagic raised seed investment led by NetMagic's co-founder Jayabalan Subramanian.

Last year, Ratan Tata invested in two data analytics firms, including Jungle Ventures-backed big data analytics startup Crayon Data and and predictive marketing and analysis company Infinite Analytics.

Venture Catalysts recently added 50 new angel investors to its network even as it plans to expand its investor base to 800-1000 members. It is also building a corpus of Rs 100 crore to provide early-stage investment support to promising ventures.

Most recently, Venture Catalysts invested in online peer-to-peer lending startup LenDen Club.

In January, train ticket discovery platform ConfirmTKT received funding of $250,000 from Venture Catalysts. The same month photography curation startup SIFTR Labs also secured $150,000 from Venture Catalysts. The network has also funded analytics startup vPhrase.

This article has been updated to correct the designations of Anirudh Damani and Vikram Lakhotia.

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