Nandan Nilekani’s NRJN Trust, Samsung back RailYatri

Noida-based Stelling Technologies, which owns travel booking platform RailYatri and long-distance bus services operator IntrCity, has raised $13.9 million in a fresh round of funding led by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani’s NRJN Family Trust. 

Samsung Venture Investment, the corporate venture capital arm of Seoul headquartered electronics giant Samsung, and returning investors ON Mauritius, part of impact investor Omidyar Network and venture capital firm Blume Ventures participated in the round.

The latest round takes the total capital raised by the company to $30 million, the company said in a statement. 

The latest round is a bridge round. The company expects to raise $50-70 million in its series C round in about a year’s time, Swapnil Tripathi, the chief business officer of the company told TechCircle.

In 2018, the company raised an undisclosed sum in a Series B round led by Omidyar Network. 

“The latest investments will help us further expand our IntrCity SmartBus network and enhance our tech platform. We intend to expand our SmartBus fleet to 300 from the current 84 in the next few months and are on track for a managed fleet of 2,000 by 2022,” Manish Rathi, co-founder and CEO of Railyatri said.

Founded in 2011 by Manish Rathi, Kapil Raizada and Sachin Saxena, RailYatri initially began as a platform that booked train tickets, train status, seat availability among other applications. 

Currently, the company is running a fleet of 84 smart uses across 18 hubs, covering 65 destinations.

In August last year, the company appointed former Times Group executive Vivek Madhukar as the head of its bus travel services. In January 2018, it acquired an online food delivery platform YatraChef.

RailYatri mainly competes with Yolobus, which operates a fleet of 20 buses on several routes across India. This month, it raised $600,000 in seed funding from an undisclosed investor to expand its fleet.

Flixbus, one of the largest intercity bus networks in Europe with a valuation of over $2 billion, is expected to soon launch its services in India.

This article has been amended from the original to reflect additional information provided by the company.