Jugnoo | Two IITians’ idea to be Uber of auto-rickshaws in India

Morning rides are hard to find when you’re living in a busy city, especially when you’re already running late. The over-crowded auto-stands are a real struggle if you’re not warrior enough to hijack a ride before the mob smothers you. And as if this isn’t enough to get under your skin early in the morning, the settlement process is even more frustrating given the high demands of ride drivers for even shortest of distances.

The entire struggle has 3 options after this:

1. Let your guard down and agree with the overly-expensive demand of the driver

2. Gather your strength and hunt down another ride till you match it with your pocket

3. Go for an easy as well as cheap ride with auto-rickshaw aggregating application – Jugnoo

Easy-peasy!

Chalo Jugnoo se!

Experimented by IITians Samar Singla (CEO) and Chinmay Agarwal (CTO), Chandigarh-based Jugnoo began as India’s first auto-rickshaw aggregator in November 2014 with the objective of making daily commute easy and reliable.

“It was just an experiment that worked out. Chinmay and I put together an app that would just match to an auto; no payments, no fares. When it started getting requests, we pretty much built the whole backend,” says Samar Singla.

The next step was to on-board the auto-rickshaw drivers, which was initially a task but once the prevailing profits came into the picture with easy to use technology, the drivers were no more reluctant. The two co-founders, via a survey, showed that while auto drivers earned around Rs 400-500 a day, the amount almost doubled to Rs 800-900, when they used the app because of the real-time continuous engagement of rides.

“After speaking to many auto drivers, we realized that they are on the road for 10 hours, but are actually driving around for five-six hours. This idle time is wastage,” says Chinmay Agarwal.

Jugnoo lights the way

Jugnoo has had a long journey till now since its inception and lit millions of lives on the way. Within 2 years of its operations, Jugnoo has expanded to 45+ cities with 4,119,186+ riders making Rs 14,719,425+ transactions monthly by riding with 65,653+ drivers on-board.

“2016 worked extremely well for us. Jugnoo has seen exponential growth and there has been a clear spike consumer interest over the last one year. The current GMV for the company is 110 crore which is almost 450% growth over the last 12 months,” says Singla.

The aggregator has raised around $16 million from two rounds of funding from Paytm, Snow Leopard Technology Ventures and Rocketship.vc.

Jugnoo hai na – from rides to hyperlocal delivery to social networking

After bringing the on-demand revolution to daily commute, Jugnoo expanded its vision and dream of touching everyday lives in a much bigger way. What began as a small company in 2014 is now spearheading the evolution of the local Indian marketplace into a digital reality.

Jugnoo now provides a wide range of local services on-demand – Auto-Rides, Groceries, Food Delivery, Meals, Logistics and even a location-based local social network.

“The plan is to keep going and see where the journey takes us. Vision is to change how hyperlocal commerce happens in India. Size is just an outcome, and solving the problem well is the more important thing,” says Singla.

Next stop – South Korea

Jugnoo is all set to create its “tyre-prints” in the South Korean market. The B2B offering of the company, Tookan (a SaaS based platform that pioneers in end-to-end field force management solutions) has been selected as one of the top three finalists to participate in K-Startup Grand Challenge – a 4 month accelerator programme, organised by the Korean government. Jugnoo was selected from 70 Indian start-ups that auditioned for the challenge.