Dubai, UAE-based car-rental startup Udrive, on Monday, announced that the company has raised $1.3 million from the crowdfunding platform Eureeca, in which 186 investors participated. The investment came as a part of the startup’s ongoing Series A round.
The company will deploy the fresh funds to boost the fleet of cars in the UAE and expand to Saudi Arabia and Turkey as a part of the company’s drive back into growth mode.
Founded out of the UAE in 2017 by Hasib Khan, Udrive claims to have around 180,000 registered users across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, and Ajman. The company says that it has completed a million trips, and expects its user growth to be doubled in the next year considering the 20 percent month-on-month growth in H2 2020.
Speaking of the development, Hasib Khan, in a statement said,
“In October, we decided that now was the time to continue our Series A funding round with Eureeca, a plan that originated in January 2020. As a regulated funding vehicle, Eureeca was able to give investors, many of whom are our customers, greater levels of confidence in investing in our business. Thanks to this funding, the future of the company looks incredibly positive,”
Sam Quawasmi, Co-CEO and co-founder of Eureeca, adeed,
“Institutional investors were keen to participate on this raise prior to going live and the demand has been compounded in the last 48 hours by the appetite from their customers and everyday investors to own equity in one of the Middle East’s most exciting growth companies. It also highlights the maturity of our platform and our ability to work with companies and facilitate raises of anything between $1 million – $5 million and beyond,”
“Despite the challenges of Covid-19, Eureeca continued to successfully fund companies from the UAE, Malaysia, UK and Holland in the midst of the crisis, underscoring Eureeca, and the business model as recession proof. As a result of our success, we have seen a 400 per cent increase in applications, including larger businesses looking to raise seven-figure raises, which is subsequently piquing the interest of institutional investors,” Hasib continued
