Crossing a million downloads, RailYatri raises pre-series A round led by Helion Venture Partners

RailYatri.in is a multi-modal train travel app that has today announced a pre-series A funding round led by Helion Venture Partners along with Omidyar Network and existing investors Blume Ventures and Ujama. The amount of funding has not been disclosed but the investment will be used for consolidating RailYatri's product leadership in the domain, and to accelerate growth. Rahul Chandra, Managing Partner, Helion will join the board of the company.

RailYatri.in provides a wide range of crowd-sourced decision making information related to train travel in India. Cofounded by Manish Rathi, Kapil Raizada and Sachin Saxena, RailYatri mobile app was launched in 2014 with an intent to provide real-time rail travel-related information, including, train status, platforms, seat availability predictions, facilities at stations, personalized alerts and providing access to essential travel services like meals and taxi. The company has partnered with taxi services firms across 20 cities and food vendors across 300 stations.

In India, nearly 25 million passengers are on the move every day. An app like RailYatri enables train commuters to make informed decisions on their travel. RailYatri provides information for over 9000 locations and 14500 trains including local trains and metros. Within its first year of the launch, the android app has crossed 1 million downloads. Manish Rathi, Co-founder and CEO, RailYatri.in said

Millions of train travelers in India make uninformed travel choices and end up spending more; both on time and money. RailYatri’s goal is to reach out to every train travelers and empower them by bridging the information/services gap. We are thrilled to have Helion on board. We believe Helion’s stellar track record in the online travel segment coupled with Rahul’s significant know how in the mobile space will help us in creating a world class consumer product and build a great experience for train travelers in India.

Helion has backed mobile-first ventures coming out of India and this investment is in line with that. MakeMyTrip is a hit investment for Helion in the travel space. Talking about the funding in RailYatri.in, Rahul Chandra of Helion said, “RailYatri is the railway enquiry window in a common man’s mobile but without the hassle of long queues. The company has succeeded in crowd-sourcing information and services for millions of Indian rail passengers. We are delighted to collaborate with RailYatri and are impressed by the founding team that comes with strong technology background and the expertise of designing and engineering scalable consumer products and services”.

Building consumer apps focus on train passengers is a huge market and the rise of mobile has led to many ventures. Trainman and Confrmtkt are similar ventures in the space while the likes of TravelKhana are focusing on food delivery in trains. Shifting focus towards the app, RailYatri has been adding features and most recently added the trip sharing feature which allows train commuters to share live location with family and friends while travelling. The plan for RailYatri should be to keep the focus on the app, build the community engagement and diversify services down the road

Website: RailYatri