Gaurav Aggarwal was leading a very comfortable life in San Jose, working for networking equipment giant, Cisco. But on every trip he made back to India, he had a grouse. “Getting a taxi from the airport is a nightmare. In fact, finding a suitable taxi service to move around within a city is a difficult task,” says the thirty- six-year-old engineer.
Aggarwal, whose family is into the transport business, soon honed in on a start-up opportunity. Savaari.com, started by Aggarwal and three co-founders, Mohit Khanna, Rahul Khanna and Manik Shah, is an online car rental company that currently services 60 cities across the country, and has a network of over 130 vendors.
The company, which started with seed money of 55,000, runs a multicity network. Its corporate headquarters are in Bangalore while services are also offered from Moradabad in the north. There is also a customer care centre in Dehra Dun.
Aggarwal says that the talent available, low cost per employee and low attrition rates are the reasons for setting up base in tier-3 cities. “More than half our revenue comes from small towns and cities. It makes a lot of business sense for us to have a strong presence in these markets,” he said.
In April, Savaari.com, which according to its founder, is already cash-flow positive, raised its first round of funding worth 5 crore from Inventus Capital Partners. The funds, which are to be paid in a single tranche, will be used to build back-end process, hire marketing personnel and expand sales network.
Read original article here: economictimes.indiatimes.com
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