Avataar leads $45m round for India's Chalo

There were re-ups from existing backers Lightrock India, WaterBridge Ventures, and Amit Singhal, a former head of search at Google who now runs seed investor Smart Start Fund, according to a statement. Stride Ventures and Trifecta Capital provided an additional USD 12m in venture debt.

Chalo has now raised USD 119m in funding and is valued at USD 400m-USD 450m, with Mohit Dubey, the company’s co-founder and CEO, denying reports of a fall in valuation.

"In October 2021 we raised USD 40m from Lightrock. Since then, the company has grown multiple times on all fronts of the business. Chalo is operating in 50 cities, including Manila and Bangkok. The valuation has gone up significantly with this round. The funding has not come as down round,” Dubey told CNBC-TV18.

The USD 40m round was led by Lightrock and Filter Capital, a private equity firm established by Nitin Nayer and Sumit Sinha, formerly of Warburg Pincus and Multiples Alternate Asset Management, respectively. Other participants were said to include high net worth individuals, including former executives from WhatsApp and Google. Singhal was among their number.

Before that, Chalo received a USD 7.2m from Chinese investors Shunwei Capital and Xiaomi in 2019 and a round of undisclosed size later the same year from WaterBridge and AdvantEdge Partners later the same year. Trifecta also provided debt funding.

Founded in 2014, Chalo brands itself as India’s leading bus transportation technology company and a one-stop service provider for hassle-free travel.

The offering includes a free app for live tracking busses and accessing the ticketing platform, and a tap-to-pay Chalo Card, which can be used to store tickets and pay fares upon boarding. There is also a mobile QR code bus pass function that is compatible with various digital wallets and the government’s cashless united payment interface infrastructure.

Dubey said that Chalo tracks 15,000 buses nationwide. The new capital will be used to strengthen the company’s technology stack and support expansion within India and overseas, but Dubey still sees scope for greater penetration of key urban centres such as Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata, and Chennai.

"We are operationally profitable. The ride-hailing giants are doing a million rides a day but we are issuing 6m tickets on Chalo platform for public transport every day. The gross ticketing value is close to USD 300m. We can get to 100,000 buses and do 2.5bn rides a month," he added.

Avataar was formed in 2019 when Mohan Kumar spun out from Norwest Venture Partners and won support from HarbourVest Partners for a USD 300m fund that acquired six assets from Norwest’s India portfolio. There was additional capital for follow-ons and some new investments. Two years later, Avataar raised a top-up fund of USD 100m.

Last October, the firm reached a first close of USD 130m on its second fund. The overall target is USD 350m.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Technology
• Expansion
• India
• TMT
• Transportation
• Avataar Venture Partners
• Waterbridge Ventures
• Stride Ventures
• Trifecta