e-commerce
Zomato ex-CMO Alok Jain’s foodtech Yumist raises USD 2 million
MUMBAI: India-based food delivery start up Yumist has raised $2 million in its pre-Series A round funding, with the Ronnie Screwvala owned venture capitalist Unilazer Venture as its leading investor. Existing Orios VP and Silicon Valley based investor Steven Lurie also participated in the investment round.
The foodtech start up launched by former Zomato CMO Alok Jain and Zing restaurant founder Abhimanyu Maheshwari in 2014 currently serves home-style meals prepared in their own kitchens at price points of Rs 65 onwards. Meals can be ordered through the Yumist app or website. The order is delivered in under 30 minutes, the service claims.
“The focus is on building a great customer experience and healthy unit economics, which has resulted in rapid organic growth for us. We’ll continue with this approach going forward,” Yumist co-founder and CEO Alok Jain informed a broadsheet on the new fundraiser.
With an aim to reduce its delivery cost from Rs 35 to Rs 20, the start-up plans to use the money raised to scale up in existing cities — Gurgaon, Delhi and Bengaluru till March, after which Yumist plans to expand to Mumbai and Pune.
“After this round, we will still keep our heads down until March in our current three cities, and show that we can be gross margin profitable at a company level,” said Jain revealed.
MUMBAI: From flights to tracks, Cleartrip is now trying to keep every journey on the same ticket. Cleartrip, part of Flipkart, has launched train ticket bookings through a partnership with Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, marking its entry into India’s vast rail travel ecosystem.
The integration allows users to search, book and manage train journeys directly within the app, as the company pushes towards becoming a unified, multi-modal travel platform. The move plugs Cleartrip into one of the world’s largest transportation networks, where over 800 million reserved passengers travel annually, alongside a daily footfall of around 23 million across Indian Railways.
The offering includes bookings across routes nationwide, covering General and Tatkal quotas as per Ministry of Railways guidelines. Users can also access real-time seat availability, fare insights, PNR status tracking, berth preferences and digital payment options within a single interface.
The expansion reflects a broader shift in travel platforms from specialising in a single mode to stitching together end-to-end journeys. For Cleartrip, the bet is not just on scale, but on simplifying a system often seen as complex and fragmented.
Company executives said the focus is on embedding predictive intelligence and personalisation into the booking journey, aiming to make everything from discovery to post-booking support faster and more intuitive.
The train booking feature is currently live on the app, with plans to extend it to the web platform soon, signalling a push towards a seamless cross-platform experience.
In a country where railways move billions each year, the next battleground for travel apps may well be decided not in the skies, but on the tracks.
