Driver a call away

Zuverlässig, German meaning is reliable. That is what inspired Sidhant Mally and Sovin Hegde, to name their on-demand driver supply start-up venture as Zuver. It offers reliable, skilled, well-trained and well-mannered drivers on-demand at your door step.

They found the driver market is unorganised and there is a demand for reliable, well-trained drivers. The company, Jobbie Services India, was launched in January. Zuver was launched in March. It was earlier offering services under the name of Quick Driver.

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Zuver claims it can help customers save cost of maintaining a full time driver with a monthly payment for a few trips during the day. For instance, monthly salary of a driver could be Rs 15,000 in a city like Mumbai, whereas the actual requirement would be only for a few trips a day.

"We can send a driver to the customer in 40 minutes and the payment starts at Rs 100 per hour. This means the customer can save money and drivers earn more by taking making more trips during the free hours," said Mally. Hegde said such customers can save 70 to 80 per cent of their cost. It provides 1,800 trips a month from Mumbai. Zuver gets 20 per cent of the payment as commission.

From 60 to 65 drivers at present in Mumbai, it is planning to increase the supply to 120 to 150 by the end of this month. In May, it announced raising of Rs 1.2 crore ($180,000) seed funding from Shruth & Smith Group, Bengaluru and Hermes Group, Mumbai. This would help them to expand to Bengaluru and Pune. The next round of funding, expected to be of $1.5-2 million would be in June.

This would help them to expand to Delhi, Hyderabad and Chennai.

By the end of this year, it plans to be in 10 cities with strong presence in at least 5-6 cities and around 1,000 drivers.