Zoomcar, the self-drive car rental company, has raised $24 million in Series B funding led by Ford Smart Mobility LLC with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Nokia Growth Partners and Empire Angels. Ford, according to Zoomcar, was its first OEM partner in 2013, when Zoomcar launched in India. It is also the largest supplier of vehicles to the self drive company. Zoomcar will use the funds for scaling its Zoomcar Associate Program (ZAP), the marketplace model and on technology. It will also target a fleet size of 25,000 cars across 25 cities by 2018 and add to its current airport offerings. The ZAP program will account for 75% of its overall vehicle inventory by early 2017. Previous funding: So far, Zoomcar has raised $45.2 million as indicated by CrunchBase. In July 2015, the company raised funding worth $11 million. In October 2014, it raised $8 million from Sequoia Capital, with participation from new investors Mohandas Pai and Abhay Jain. In October 2013, Zoomcar raised $1 million in seed funding, $200,000 from angel investor Raj Kumar Elango, $30,000 angel funding from former US treasury secretary Larry Summers and $215,000 from Empire Angels New York, Lady Barbara Judge among other angel investors. ZAP to scale to 100,000 cars by 2019 The company launched the ZAP program in April this year which would allow Zoomcar’s users as well as other individuals buy one or more vehicles and lease them to Zoomcar and operate on a revenue sharing model. At the time, Greg…
