Noida-based RailYatri, a train-travel app startup backed by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding in a Series B round led by impact investor Omidyar Network.

Existing investors Nandan Nilekani along with early-stage venture capital firm Blume Ventures, and homegrown venture capital fund Helion Venture Partners also participated in the round.

The startup will utilize the freshly raised funds to fund its expansion into hotels and packages for which it is hiring across verticals, Manish Rathi, co-founder and chief executive of RailYatri, said to a business daily.

“We plan to reach 10 million annual transactions this year, and this round will help us in achieving our goal. Our low cost of acquisition allows growth with margins,” he added.

Founded in 2014 by Kapil Raizada, Manish Rathi and Sachin Saxena, RailYatri provides information on trains, passenger amenities at stations, platforms and trains’ speed as well as alerts via mobile app, web and SMS. In India, close to 25 million passengers board a train every day.

In the past, RailYatri.in is has worked with Indian Railways to power their National Train Enquiry System (NTES) and enable them to distribute train related running information through their portal at TrainEnquiry.com which provides train running information to the passengers.

The above development was first reported in VC Circle.

The startup first raised Rs.30 crore funding from a Blume Ventures and an unnamed US-based angel investor, in November 2014. This was followed by undisclosed amount of funding in pre-series A round led by Helion Venture Partners and Omidyar Network, in June 2015.

In April, the startup again raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A round of funding from billionaire Nandan Nilekani. In October 2016, Railyatri again raised undisclosed amount from same set of investors.

The startup, to date, has raised about $536,000 in total funding, according to data by Crunchbase.

Recently, RailYatri has acqui-hired Kochi-based food-delivery technology startup YatraChef to strengthen its supply-side commerce capabilities, as it continues to add new offerings to its travel marketplace.

Speaking about Omidyar Network, the self-styled "philanthropic investment firm" has recently invested $1 million in Healofy, a women-centric, multilingual parenting social network. Prior to which, it has participated in ₹3.5 crore funding of Doubtnut, a Gurugram-based edtech startup. Prior to that, it participated in $1.6 million funding of Transerve Technologies, a Goa-based civic tech company.
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