GoToMobility has raised $150K from Ex-Uber Finance Head Mr. Jesse Lucas, on a Valuation of INR 11 Millions $, Mr. Lucas was the 15th Employee of Uber and took it up to the IPO in 2018. His Knowledge and expertise in this business is surely more valuable than his investment amount.
GoTo is currently Raising $ 2.5 Millions in its seed funding round which is expected to be closed in the next 6 month time period. with Presence of Jesse now GoTo will be able to attack the market more aggressively.
“Intercity Public Road Transit is more than $ 5Bn Daily Market in India, I have been the guy who have monitored uber launch in Indian Market, I understand its potential & Growth very deeply also I am very much impressed with current founding team of GoTo, Harsh & Akhilesh both seems to be a prefect match of Co-Founders. Being and Investor and Board Member I can sense its possibilities that GoTo can be a Unicorn in a Span of 18 month to 24 Months, Which would be the even the record in India. this is challenging but I have seen the hunger in founding team of it & trusting capabilities” says Jesse Lucas.
GoTo Is an Advanced Alternative of Daily commuter for the Intercity Segment which operates on exclusive fleets and owns 100% of its inventory. Before lockdown, GoTo was sharing inventory with existing bus operators between cities but it faced difficulties in terms of Maintaining the Safety & Security standards for its passengers as it was having other passengers from different apps even bus operators used to take lots of off-line booking. Further, operation standards were not getting followed.
During the lockdown period, the company revamped the entire Transportation System in its app and launched an Exclusivity clause for its vendor. Since then there had been no look back for GoTo & the current growth rate for the company is 2X month on month, GoTo is eying to multiply the current growth rate to 10X more from April onwards, and the way things are moving with this start-up it looks like the Company will achieve this target.
GoTo was founded by Harsh Vardhan Sharma & Akhilesh Sagar before raising this round GoTo has seen more than 200 Rejections from Investors & VC.
“It was not at all easy to raise money, specially in 2020 because Covid-19 has affected the entire transportation industry at its most. I have been advised by many people to shut it down soon as lockdown was declared but it was the only option that I was not ready to opt for. I have done extensive Investor reach to find the right person for this investment including buying the database of 5000 Professional Investor across globe, I have mailed all of them using mail marking software, a lot of them have responded back to us, but all those who has responded to us were having average ticket size of $ 2 Million to $ 10 Millions Which was at least 5X more than what we were seeking to raise. I was always interested in the people who were with Uber at its very early stage so I accessed some of Uber’s early days documents on US Security exchange website, I got the contact details for Jesse Lucas there. It was not having any mail id so I have sent a What’s app text to him, mentioning the purpose of reaching out to him, Jesse took more than 2 weeks to respond the message by mentioning that he is not active on what’s app and asked to drop a mail for the same, from here our conversation started with Jesse and He found us perfect fit for his personal Investment Portfolio. We are not only pleased that Jesse has invested with us we are pleased because he is joining us on the Board of directors as well because his expertise in Finance is something we were looking to as well for our mentorship”, says Harsh Vardhan Sharma.
Source: Business World
