Hyderabad based Zify.co raises $190K from angel investors

Giving tough competition to firms like Carpool by Meru, BlaBla Cars and Tripda, Hyderabad based Zify.co – a car ride sharing service provider,  successfully raised $190K from SOSventures and two other Hyderabad-based angel investors in the second week of October.

About Zify

Aiming at solving the raging issue of traffic in major cities, Zify.co is an all new way to commute. Search and book a shared ride to your office with a verified member of the community at just Rs. 5 /KM in a single tap! This firm provides a social platform to connect those who have a car and those who don’t. So, if you own a car, and are travelling from say Himayatnagar to Gachibowli, through Zify you can meet people who would want to join you in this route. They will pay you for offering you the car ride. Thus, all thanks to this service, you get to meet new people daily and with their smart route matching algorithm, you are entitled to get intermediate pickup and drops. The startup also has its own wallet for cashless transactions. Just recharge your Zify account, and forget the hassle of carrying cash or credit card while commuting.

This wonderful startup is the brain idea of Anurag (Founder & CEO) and Pramod Kumar (Co-founder & CTO). The rest of the creative team has Amit Singh (Senior Software engineer), Priya and Ruthvik (Community Manager).

About SOSV – the lead angel investor in Zify.co

SOSV is “The Accelerator VC”. They run accelerator programs with specialties in hardware, synthetic biology, bio-design, software, and other strategic areas of growth.  SOSV has $250M in assets under management and provides seed, venture, and growth-stage funding to startup companies in hardware, software, consumer services and life sciences markets. Their market-specific accelerator programs are located in Europe, Asia, and the USA. The firm has a staff of over 50 worldwide, and 300+ global mentors. SOSV is headquartered in Cork, Ireland with offices in San Francisco, New York, Princeton, Boston, Connecticut, Shenzhen and Shanghai.

Over the past 20 years the firm has funded well over 300 startups and continues to fund over 130 startups per year, including the 120+ that go through our accelerator programs.  It was founded in 1994, and today the MD of this VC is Sean O’ Sullivan, who worked as an engineer, musician, computer programmer, software designer, marketing guy, sales guy, humanitarian worker, war photographer, cinematographer on music videos, short films, and documentaries, stock analyst, freelance photojournalist etc. Sean was also an early investor in Netflix & Guitar Hero.

“I believe the competition is helping us in a lot of ways. Carpool as a concept is still very much new in India and the marketing efforts are helping in educating the users about the alternate mode of transportation that is affordable & more social. Even though we have a sizable chunk of users sharing city to city rides, but our focus is more on within the city travel. Once we create a large enough user network for intra-city travel, the inter-city segment would be extremely easy for us to tap into.” Quotes Anurag when asked about how he feels about having tough competition.

The amount received as funding, will be used mainly to upgrade Zify’s technology and will also be a part of the marketing strategies of the firm.  Presently Zify’s services are available only in Hyderabad and Bangalore and thus with the funds that they got, they plan to expand their services in all metro cities, with at-least 10,000 daily rides in the next six months.

When asked one of the investors about their decision of investing in Zify, this is what they had to say, “What impressed me about ZIFY was their technology & their understanding of the problem. Moreover, they have done their ground-work really well and it is clearly visible in their traction so far.”

Zify was amongst the top 5 startups that participated in the Inc42’s StartupPulse Bangalore edition and before this funding, they had successfully secured $15K from Srini Koppolu (Ex-CMD of Microsoft India), 50K Ventures, Parampara Funds and CIE – IIIT Hyderabad.

Startup Hyderabad wishes the entire team of Zify a hearty congratulations and good luck for all their future plans.

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