By Saumya Tewari

Bangalore based portal for taxi aggregation, Taxiforsure has raised first round of institutional funding from its seed investors, Accel Partners, Helion Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. The company has so far raised $4 million (about Rs 23 crore). In May last year, the venture raised Series A  venture capital funding from its investors.

Speaking to India Digital Review, Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder of the venture informed that the funds will be utilized for expansion to other cities. The funds will also be used to hire talent, expand technology and product team.

Taxiforsure aims to provide customers accessible and safe taxi ride by equipping operators with technology. The platform aggregates both organized and unorganized operators to get the customer his/her taxi on time. Primarily based and operating in Bangalore, the company has soft launched its Delhi operations in March this year.

Presently, the Bangalore operations has a partnership with around 25 cab operators while in Delhi it is around 15. The company has claimed to have reached operational profitability in Bangalore.
The company aims to expand to 15 cities by the end of 2015. It has earlier announced that it will launch its services in tier I and tier II cities like Delhi & NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Jaipur.

Taxiforsure competes with ventures like Ola Cabs, founded in 2011 which has raised funding from Tiger Global, has operations in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi.

It also competes with Savaari, another online aggregator, primarily focuses on outstation trips and multiple-hours packages. The company had also raised funding last year, from Inventus Capital Partners.

However, Aprameya said in an earlier interaction with IDR that “We don’t have competition as we are a marketplace. Savaari was one more player which has funded but then they don’t seem to be concentrating on city commute. We have differentiated ourselves very well with a range of cab services being provided by us. We have an option from a basic Indica to a Mercedes.”

Streamlining company’s broad targets for 2013, he further added “We really want to make a mark on top three cities Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and make inroads into markets like Pune and Chennai by 2013 that is presently our target.”

TaxiforSure is co-founded by by Raghunandan G and Aprameya Radhakrishna, both engineering graduates from NITK Surathkal who later went to IIM Ahmedabad.