Exclusive: GoMechanic secures seed investment from Venture Catalysts

Automobile servicing platform GoMechanic, run by Targetone Innovations Pvt. Ltd., has raised $250,000 (nearly Rs 1.68 crore) in funding from seed investment and innovation platform Venture Catalysts.

GoMechanic was founded in April this year by IIM-Ahmedabad alumni Amit Bhasin and Kushal Karwa. Later, Nitin Rana and Rishabh Karwa joined the founding team.

"The funds will primarily be utilised to build our tech infrastructure and expand the team. We also aim to partner with 40-plus garages in Delhi/NCR and over 400 verified service providers on board our platform in the near future for better and swifter service provision," said Bhasin.

The Gurgaon-based startup connects users with automobile repair and maintenance service providers in the vicinity and provides original spare parts for all the services booked at its partner service centres. The platform also offers guarantee on all spare parts provided up to three years. The company claims to provide services at a price which is 30-50% lower than normal service stations.

"At Venture Catalysts, we are constantly on the lookout for disruptive ideas – ideas that solve global problems at a local scale. GoMechanic, which leverages technology to address extant issues in the fragmented automobile maintenance and spare market, fits into our investment criteria perfectly," said Dr Apoorv Sharma, co-founder of Venture Catalysts.

In the same segment, last month, Mumbai-based car service startup Carcrew.in raised $500,000 (around Rs 3.4 crore) in an angel round led by TVS Group.

Venture Catalysts has invested $3 million across 15 startups till now, both in India and overseas.

The investment platform – founded by Sharma, Anil Jain, Anuj Golecha, and Gaurav Jain in December 2015 – invests $100,000-250,000 in very early stage startups in Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, ad-tech, virtual reality, education, e-commerce and retail space.

Most recently, it had invested $250,000 in Don't Scratch Your Head (DSYH), an Ahmedabad-based SaaS-based logistics reconciliation platform for e-commerce channel.

Its portfolio of startups also includes train discovery platform ConfirmTKT , photography curation venture Siftr Labs Pvt. Ltd, data analytics firm vPhrase Analytics Solutions Pvt. Ltd, peer-to-peer lending start-up LenDenClub, driver analytics firm Vahanalytics, among others.

In July, Venture Catalysts had raised $500,000 (around Rs 3.4 crore) from Zaffiro Ventures. The platform claims to have more than 2,000 investors associated with it.