RailYatri raises fresh round of funding from existing investors

Noida-based Stelling Technologies Pvt Ltd, the company which runs RailYatri.in, a platform which gives railways-related information, has raised a fresh round of funding from all its existing investors—Nandan Nilekani, Helion Ventures, Omidyar Partners and Blume Ventures.

The amount of funding was undisclosed.

This round comes after the Series A funding which the company had raised early this year.

With this fresh funding, "RailYatri is looking at aggressively pushing towards growth and new services", according to a statement issued by the company.

"We have witnessed an unprecedented organic growth over the last several months and are quickly moving in the direction of becoming the largest travel app in the country," said Manish Rathi, CEO & co-founder RailYatri.

"Over the next 12 months we plan to establish RailYatri.in as a household name across the country," he added.

The company recently added meal-orders in trains using the company's local vendors at various stations and nearby localities. It is also planning to expand into bus-ticketing, budget-hotel booking, and travel merchandise. RailYatri uses deep-analytics technology to make intelligent predictions that help travellers make smart decisions. The app uses a traveller's mobile GPS to predict a train's delay, in addition to platform number, coach position, on-time history of a train and wait list confirmations.

"Their prediction algorithms are already delivering time & money savings for the travellers," said Nandan Nilekani, former Chairman of UIDAI.

Nilekani has also invested in online buying hub for SMEs Power2SME, industrial robots maker Systemantics India, mobile startup Mubble, aviation tech startup Team Indus, online deal-making platform LetsVenture, logistics firm Fortigo and book publisher Juggernaut.

RailYatri recently forayed into becoming a train-travel oriented marketplace. Now, travellers can book essential services such as onboard meals, bus tickets and budget rooms.

"RailYatri's strength lies in their ability to drive huge organic acquisitions at near zero costs. This positions them strongly to scale positive unit-economics transactions, and is one of the reasons they have been able to stand apart from the rest," said Rahul Chandra of Helion Ventures.

RailYatri was founded by Kapil Raizada, Sachin Saxena and Manish Rathi in 2011. The app provides the most comprehensive information on trains, passenger amenities at stations, platform information, speed of the train, personalised alerts via the mobile app, mobile web and SMS.

"We're inspired by RailYatri's innovative technology-led solution catering to a massive population of long distance rail passengers through a content, commerce and community strategy. We believe the company is well poised to generate impact at scale while achieving financial success," says Siddharth Nautiyal, investment partner at Omidyar Network.