Loca, a Bengaluru-based shared last-mile connectivity provider, has bagged an undisclosed amount in it initial round of funding from Stellaris Venture Partners, Fosun RZ Capital and a bunch of individual investors, cited Mint.
The platform Loca will put the freshly-infused funds to expand its presence to all major metro stations in Bengaluru and further build its tech and operations teams. Also, it plans to expand to multiple cities including New Delhi by early 2020.
“Making shared mobility work reliably at scale while keeping it affordable and convenient is a massive technology problem. We spent many months building the dynamic routing algorithm. The average Loca user gets into a cab within 2.5 minutes of getting out of the metro, even in peak hours. The specificity and volume of data from our operations opens many possibilities to improve further on this. We are confident the value at our price point can help us build a large scale across India,” said Gautam Patil, co-founder of Loca.
The company Loca said that the motorized micro-mobility market in India is approximately 100 million trips per day.
Loca was founded by Gautam Patil and Krishnakumar Ramachandran in April 2019. The platform Loca conducted field trials for over nine months to develop Loca’s proprietary ride-sharing algorithm before launching the service.
At present, Loca is servicable from four metro stations in Bengaluru–Indiranagar, Yelachenahalli, Mysore Road and Vijaynagar.
“We view micro-mobility transit as a massive and largely unsolved problem in almost all cities in India. In China, we have witnessed new-age micro-mobility solutions being adopted by citizens at a rapid pace with millions of rides being taken daily. Fosun’s portfolio company Hellobike has showcased the huge scale and adoption and we believe Loca can be at the forefront in India,” said Tej Kapoor, co-executive president of Fosun RZ Capital.