Alteria Capital has led a Rs 25 crore venture debt round in dockless scooter sharing platform Vogo, the Mumbai-based specialty credit financing firm announced on Thursday.This is the second debt financing round raised by Vogo, which also counts Ola, India’s largest ride-hailing platform as an investor. In March, ET was the first to report that Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal had put in $3 million each in Vogo and its competitor Bounce, through his investment arm BAC Acquisitions.
Bengaluru-based Vogo, which also counts Matrix Partners, Kalaari Capital, Stellaris Venture Partners and Pawan Munjal, chairman and managing director of Hero MotoCorp as its backers, is currently present in 5 cities across the country, and claims to have completed over 3 million rides.
“We are thrilled to double down on our partnership with Alteria. Since they first came on board, we have grown over 70X and will leverage this investment to keep growing rapidly and bring Vogo scooters to millions of customers across India,” Anand Ayyadurai, chief executive of Vogo, said in a statement.
Vogo operates a scooter sharing network, that allows users to pick up scooters from designated pickup points throughout the city, and drop them at any other designated point at the end of the ride. Its scooters are fitted with patented technology that allows consumers to directly access or start the scooter, via its app.“We have seen the rapid growth in this segment over the last 9-12 months and Vogo has consistently surpassed expectations on operating performance and driving demand. While there are many more execution aspects to tackle as they scale, we feel this team is well placed to emerge as a strong player in the urban mobility category. ” said Vinod Murali, managing partner at Alteria Capital, said in the official statement.
The Mumbai-based firm, founded by Murali and Ajay Hattangdi, who previously led Temasek-backed InnoVen Capital’s India operations, before setting up their own shop, has emerged as one of the country’s largest providers of venture debt to the country’s startup ecosystem.
Alteria manages a Rs 800 crore corpus, with a green-shoe option of Rs.200 crore. It provides venture debt in the range of Rs 5 crore to Rs 100 crore to primarily venture-backed companies, and counts the likes of Faasos, Dunzo, RAW Pressery and Toppr in its portfolio.
