Mumbai: Chakraview Solutions Pvt Ltd, which operates the school bus app CHAKRAVIEW has raised Rs 1 crore in an angel funding round from HNIs.
Founded in 2016, Chakraview provides an end-to-end communication solution to schools and parents with features like real-time tracking, bus alerts, attendance etc. Its software-as-a-service (SaaS) based platform enables schools and bus operators to manage their database, route planning and other optimisation tools to manage their fleet.
The Mumbai-based startup plans to deploy the fresh capital to expand geographically to other states this year. It currently operates in Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad and other select cities in Maharashtra and Gujarat. It will also allocate some funds towards growing its tech, sales and operations team and working on low-cost solutions to support Affordable Private Schools (APS) across the country. Currently, it largely serves the ICSE, CBSE and International schools which have higher affordability levels.
“The newly acquired funds will allow us to stay on the momentum of scaling up our operations across the country. We plan to touch the lives of 100k parents this year who are looking for an affordable but credible solution to track their school buses,” said Jaya Bhura, Co-founder & CEO of Chakraview.
As per Rajesh Bhura, Co-Founder, “The school transport market is highly fragmented with a few big but many small contractors in each city running a fleet of up to 10 buses. We are attempting to serve their latent need and give them the tool to manage their fleet. Moreover, the GPS hardware-based tracking solutions prevalent in the market are not sufficient for their customers (i.e. parents) since they shuffle their buses often. Our smartphone-based tracking solution is filling this critical gap.
According to a report by Mordor Intelligence, the school bus market was valued at USD 3.95 billion globally in 2021. It is expected to register at a CAGR of over 6.59% in terms of revenue in the next five years. India is peculiar in the sense that a majority of the parents, especially from APS schools, prefer ferrying their children in smaller vans. The aggregate school bus and school van market in India is expected to grow at a healthy rate owing to increased enrolment of children in schools in non-urban areas and the increasing trend of dual-income families in urban areas.
Chakraview claims to be the only comprehensive school bus communication platform in India’s crowded logistics software marketplace. According to Chakraview’s statement, it has so far onboarded 1000 vehicles, 75+ Schools, and 50000 parents and logged over 4000 routes and 30000 km every day. It is also in discussion with OEMs to provide a holistic solution to their school bus customers.
