Google supports Indian open source Uber rival

Google has become one of the latest investors in Moving Tech, the parent firm of Indian open source ridesharing app Namma Yatri that is quickly capturing market share from Uber and Ola with its no-commission model.

Bengaluru-based Moving Tech has raised $11 million in a pre-Series A funding round co-led by Blume Ventures and Antler, the startup said. Google, which has pledged to invest $10 billion in India, participated in the round.

Namma Yatri works atop the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), an interoperable scheme backed by the Indian government that is aiming to democratize e-commerce in the country. Namma Yatri’s app connects customers with auto-rickshaw and cab drivers without charging either party for rides. Instead, the startup collects a small monthly fee from its driver partners.

Uber and Ola, in comparison, charge their driver partners as much as 25%-30% of the ride cost, and have refused to join the ONDC network for their core mobility offerings.

Moving Tech’s co-founders, Magizhan Selvan and Shan M S, told TechCrunch that they identified an opportunity after they found out how frustrated drivers were with their treatment in the existing system.

“There was a lack of differentiated approach,” Shan said, reflecting on the decade-long duopoly that Uber and Ola have enjoyed unchallenged in India. Moving Tech doesn’t offer customer discounts or driver incentives, and it is banking on providing a service that people find genuinely useful, he added.

To understand drivers’ challenges, Selvan drove over 500 auto-rickshaw rides, and he said the startup’s guiding principle is to infuse empathy into its services.

Namma Yatri is operational in more than half-a-dozen Indian cities, including Bengaluru and Hyderabad, and has had over 46 million rides since its launch in 2022, according to its public dashboard. The startup was incubated by Juspay, a SoftBank-backed financial services startup.

The startup said it is operationally profitable, and doesn’t see the need to raise a lot of capital.

Over the past decade, India has been pursuing an ambitious strategy to digitize its economy and public services through the “India Stack,” a set of open APIs for identity, payments and data sharing. This government-led initiative aims to create unified digital infrastructure that can be leveraged by both public and private sectors to deliver services more efficiently and inclusively to India’s 1.4 billion citizens.

Notably, India has revolutionized the mobile payments landscape in the country with UPI, an interoperable network that now processes over 11 billion transactions a month — surpassing the combined volume of all card companies.

Karthik Reddy, a partner at Blume Ventures, said Moving Tech was at the forefront of transforming mobility “with a fresh and innovative model.” He added, “We were amazed by the simplicity of what the tech and a robust product can do to solve mass mobility. We are glad to partner with an exceptional team and back their grand vision.”

Namma Yatri will deploy the fresh funds to expand its engineering and research and development teams, its founders said. It’s also seeking to expand its offerings to more types of transportations, including buses, they added.