WhistleDrive Raises INR 72Crores in Series- B from Colosseum Group

WhistleDrive announced today it has raised INR 72 Crores from Chicago based Colosseum Group. WhistleDrive provides technology-enabled fleet services for corporates and operates 700+ fleet across 3 cities.

Announcing the Series B fund, an alumnus of Shiv Nadar University, Founder and CEO of WhistleDrive, Rakesh Munnanooru said “WhistleDrive target is to grow 10x with this series B investment. In the next 12 months we will look at entering 2 new cities to offer our TaaS Model - Transportation as a Service to Corporates beyond Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai where we will operate, expand fleets and fast-track customer acquisitions.”

WhistleDrive offers office commute services to several companies, including ADP, Invesco and Hitachi Consulting, to name a few. The tech-platform, Whistle Tech, developed by the company, allows corporates to automate the entire transportation process resulting in significant cost savings and also improve employee satisfaction via a reliable, comfortable and secure ride to work. It serves 32 clients registering more than 1 Lakh trips a month to transport more than 15, 000+ employees to their offices, every day.

Expressing the idea behind the investment, Shailendra Tipparaju, Chairman of Colosseum Group said, “WhistleDrive team’s mission and execution echo the core of Colosseum Group’s value system. In addition to the significant value they add to the transportation industry via their well-built scalable solution, we are excited to be associated with the Young Indian amazing team! The company roadmap is robust and we found it is the right time to re-invest in their growth story”.

Speaking on this occasion, Dr. Bala V. Balachandran, Chairman of Colosseum Advisory Board said, one of the pioneers of Indian Management landscape, on behalf of Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM) Chennai, Balachandran Foundation Incubation Center (AGBI), noted that these esteemed organizations, with a mission to empower entrepreneurship in India, are thrilled to have played an instrumental role in the nurturing and cultivation of WhistleDrive from an idea stage to acceleration & growth stage. He also expressed absolute confidence that WhistleDrive is poised to be the leading Transportation as a Service (TaaS) company, and wished them the best “road ahead”.

Industry estimates the number of IT direct workforce in India is pegged at about 3.9 million, of which 1.1 million use transport arranged by the company. The transportation sector in India is currently valued at a whopping USD16 Billion, of which about USD2.5 Billion is spent directly by Indian corporates. Yet, the domain still suffers from a lack of tech intervention.

WhistleDrive’s offerings include “Whistle Fleet” – Technology Enabled Fleet, “Whistle Shuttle” – A B2B Shuttle Service for Last mile connectivity and point pick-ups and “Whistle 360o” – End to End transport management powered by best in class technology and ground operations.

Founded by Rakesh Munnanooru in 2016, the Hyderabad headquartered company had raised INR 5 Crores in April 2018 from Colosseum Group. The company has bagged several awards including the 10 Best Start-ups in Hyderabad- 2018, 50 Emerging Start-ups to Watch in 2019.