Tuesday, November 1, 2011

RelayRides reels in $3M more for Series A

By Rodney H. Brown

The investment arm of General Motors Co. has added to the Series A round for Cambridge-born startup RelayRides Inc., boosting the round to $13 million, according to a press release.

Also participating in the new tranche with General Motors Ventures was RelayRides CEO Andre Haddad, and previous investors in earlier tranches of the Series A, Google Ventures, August Capital and Shasta Ventures. According to the release, RelayRides will use the funds to expand into markets beyond Boston and its new headquarters home, San Francisco.

General Motors recently announced an exclusive partnership deal with RelayRides, in which RelayRides “borrower” customers can unlock reserved cars using their mobile phones, if the car is an OnStar-enabled GM vehicle.

In August, RelayRides took in nearly $5 million from a second tranche of a Series A financing backed by August Capital, Google Ventures, with new investors Shasta Ventures and entrepreneur and author Lisa Gansky. That followed the initial $5.1 million tranche that RelayRides raised in March. At that time, RelayRides used the funds to expand into San Francisco and from Cambridge into Boston.

RelayRides was a $50,000 winner of the inaugural 2010 MassChallenge startup competition – a nonprofit startup incubator competition intended to keep companies in Massachusetts. The company connects car owners with people who need one to rent through an online interface.