Genesis Invests in ElecTrip
On behalf of Genesis, I’m excited to announce our investment in ElecTrip. ElecTrip seeks to provide a more convenient, environmentally-friendly, and cheaper alternative for mid-distance business and personal travel between cities.
The Problem
A New York University study completed in 2011 showed that about 200,000 Texans travel once or twice per week between the major Texas cities: Houston, Dallas, Austin, or San Antonio. These commuters use a variety of transportation, but none of them grant complete productivity, efficiency, and luxury comfort at a reasonable rate. Individuals lose working time if they are driving between cities, or if they must deal with long lines and connection points at airports. The city-to-city, door-to-door, services that already exist either do not provide travel in a luxury car or cost much more than ElecTrip. Bus services that claim to cater to a luxury market do not provide a door-to-door or private experience.
ElecTrip deploys luxury electric vehicles driven by highly experienced drivers to provide a private, door-to-door, and city-to-city ride. ElecTrip charges a flat rate for each ride and does not sell individual seats for a specific trip. ElecTrip operates in Texas but plans to refine its platform to enable expansion to other high demand routes across the country.
The Founders
ElecTrip was founded by Mandeep Patel and Eliott Lee. Mandeep initially began to think seriously about this business idea in the summer of 2017 while at his internship at BP after hearing an executive complain about the limited inter-city travel options. Mandeep brought Eliott onto the founding team in early Spring 2018. They had met at several case competitions, but combined forces for the first time to work on ElecTrip.
Mandeep Patel (Mechanical Engineering ’19) — Mandeep serves as the CEO of ElecTrip. Besides serving as Co-Founder and CEO for ElecTrip, Mandeep is the co-founder of Sun Co. This company is creating a device that will attach to solar panels to rotate them according to the sun’s movement. Sun Co. was funded by Genesis and is currently a portfolio company. Mandeep has rejected two full-time offers to pursue ElecTrip full-time after graduation.
Eliott Lee (Mechanical Engineering ’20) — Eliott serves as the COO of ElecTrip. Eliott participated in Freshman Founders and helped run digital marketing for two years. He also helped organize OPEN, Houston’s annual entrepreneurship competition/conference. Elliot turned down offers for a summer internship so that he could devote his time to ElecTrip and plans to work on the venture full-time upon graduation.
How’re They Doing?
To-date, ElecTrip has provided hundreds of rides to clients at Shell, Deloitte, McKinsey & Company, and the Texas Bar Association. The company has seen outstanding growth of over 20% per month and hopes to accelerate it even more. As part of this effort, the company hopes to identify and expand to routes outside of Texas.
Why I Led This Deal by Juan Alvarez, Venture Partner
This team made it easy to believe in them. ElecTrip came in with much more traction than is typical for a company applying to join our portfolio. Not only did the venture have impressive traction, the team was also outstanding and incredibly driven. Mandeep had already proven himself to be an incredibly intelligent and strategic founder through his work on Sun Co., another Genesis portfolio company. Given ElecTrip’s clear competitive advantages, go-to-market strategy, and excellent founding team, Genesis could confidently support this idea. We can’t wait to see the incredible results that are sure to come in the very near future.
