India's Rapido continues to show its dominance as the bike taxi startup becomes the latest company to reach a $1 billion in valuation led by its latest funding round worth $120 million.
The recent funding round, known as Series E, reportedly highlights Rapido's increasing importance in India's transportation industry as it establishes itself as a strong competitor against the dominant players Uber and Ola. It is also aiding Swiggy in maintaining a competitive edge against Zomato in the highly competitive food delivery market.
(Photo : Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay)
Self-driving cars represent a promising future in transportation, yet concerns arise regarding their inclusivity toward individuals with disabilities.
Swiggy was the main investor in Rapido's most recent funding round in April 2022, which gave the mobility startup a valuation of $800 million. Rapido has accumulated approximately $430 million in funding so far.
By concentrating on providing transportation for motorcycles and scooters rather than taxis, Rapido has been able to overcome obstacles that have limited the expansion of conventional cab services in India, taking advantage of the high prevalence of two-wheeler vehicles in the country's busy cities. Rapido failed to reply to a request for a comment.
Rapido Deals
In Rapido, Swiggy has discovered a delivery partner that is assisting in fulfilling the increasing food delivery demand in the nation. According to an anonymous Rapido investor discussing strategy, the partnership with Swiggy enables Rapido to offer its drivers increased job opportunities. Swiggy intends to raise its ownership in Rapido after the IPO, as per a well-informed source.
Rapido has also apparently interacted with Khazanah, the sovereign wealth fund of Malaysia, for financing in the ongoing round.
Latest Startup Funding Rounds
Regarding other startup updates, Arjun Pillai, the previous chief data officer at ZoomInfo, secured a $15 million Series A funding for his new startup, DocketAI, which is a sales engineer powered by artificial intelligence that aims to save time for human sales representatives.
Pillai noted that sales engineers at ZoomInfo, who are experts in technical sales, were engaged in various discussions with potential clients, some of which did not need their specialized knowledge. They are frequently faced with challenging yet typical questions from account executives.
Pillai believes that having a sales engineer attend every call is expensive, highly inefficient, and time-consuming. Therefore, Pillai recognized an opportunity to develop an artificial intelligence sales engineer. DocketAI can help non-technical salespeople write RFPs and technical papers faster and more easily.
Pillai stated that DocketAI allows sales engineers to focus on more complex and strategic corporate prospects instead of replacing them, thereby freeing up their time.
In order for the startup's AI to work, over 100 applications used by Docket's software clients need to be incorporated, consumed, and categorized. Pillai clarified that the AI of the company is not trained using enterprise data. Docket operates similarly to Glean and Atlassian's Rovo, serving as a search engine for structured and unstructured workplace data.
Nevertheless, Pillai notes that Docket's AI stands out because it learns from the actions of top salespeople. Pillai claims that sales organizations can increase win rates and productivity by utilizing Docket.
From the beginning of the year, the company has been actively promoting its product, resulting in the acquisition of multiple new high-level paying clients every month.
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