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Intercity mobility startup Zingbus on Tuesday said it has raised Rs 44.6 crore in a funding round led by Infoedge ventures.

The pre-series A round also saw participation from an impressive line of other investors from silicon valley like Funders Club, Pioneer fund, Anim Fund (Founders Fund Scout), Locus ventures, and Liquid 2 Ventures.

“The freshly raised funds will be utilised to develop technology for the next leap of improvement in traveler experience and expand the service to new geographies. The startup is also hiring across engineering, product, business, and operations profiles,” the company said in a statement.

Existing investors AdvantEdge technology fund, 9 Unicorns, and Venture Catalyst also invested in this funding round.

The company has also received backing from a clutch of value-adding angels like NFL fame Joe Montana, Alan Rutledge, John Jersin, Ankur Nagpal, Vinod Gupta, Ben McCan, and Harry Robertson among others, the statement added.

Founded in 2019, the startup aims to make safe and reliable travel accessible for everyone. It aggregates fleets of buses to deliver an end-to-end standardised intercity travel experience to its customers.

“We see the pandemic as a black swan event for the entire intercity bus industry. It has upended this unorganised, highly fragmented, and mainly unbranded market.

“The current industry dynamics are such that we find ourselves in a unique position to build something precious quickly. Pandemic has led to higher expectations of hygiene and safety from customers,” Zingbus CEO Prashant Kumar said.

Zingbus has already restarted its operations after the second wave subsided and aims to run over 250 buses by the end of this year.

The startup claims to connect more than 100 cities and towns across the country.

On their funding, Kitty Agarwal, Partner, Infoedge ventures, said, 

“We are very excited to partner with the Zingbus team in their journey to utilize technology for building a sustainable, shared mobility company delivering a consistent, high-quality experience to bus travelers in India. The team has a unique combination of tech and logistics expertise with best-in-class capital efficiency. Very few travel and mobility companies have seen strong growth with robust unit economics despite Covid disruptions, so we have immense confidence in the execution.” 

(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)