TransLoc to ramp up hiring after raising $8M

Transit technology company TransLoc, which recently unveiled a partnership with Uber, expects to add 35 workers this year after raising $8 million in funding from investors.

“We’re definitely going to grow across the board,” said CEO Doug Kaufman. In particular, TransLoc plans to expand its product development, sales and marketing and customer support teams.

The Durham-based company, which currently has nearly 50 employees – including 20 added last year – announced Thursday that it raised $6 million in equity funding and $2 million in debt in its first-ever round of outside funding.

The funding was co-led by Durham venture capital fund SJF Ventures. Other participants include Marc Benioff’s Efficient Capacity fund; Benioff is the founder and CEO of Salesforce.com.

Dave Kirkpatrick, a managing director and co-founder of SJF, said he’s impressed with TransLoc’s management team, its growth opportunities and its partnership with Uber.

“The market’s ready now,” he said. “TransLoc was probably early with some of its technology. … Transit agencies are getting more pressure to be more flexible and more technology-forward.”

Founded in 2004, TransLoc has expanded its offerings in the past few years and now offers four products that are used by more than 140 municipal and university transit agencies nationwide.

The agencies pay TransLoc based on the size of their fleet. Kaufman declined to disclose the privately-held company’s annual revenue.

TransLoc’s RealTime product enables transit agencies to track their vehicles and dispatch them, among other functions. Another product, Rider, is a mobile app that enables riders to see where transit vehicles are and receive a prediction on when they will arrive, and to receive an alert when they are five minutes away.

Last month TransLoc launched, in partnership with Uber, a beta version of Rider that can be used to coordinate a bus and an Uber ride to reach a destination with one click.

The betas are being conducted in the Triangle – in conjunction with GoTriangle, better known as Triangle Transit, the three-county bus agency that ferries riders between towns – and in Memphis, Tenn.

“So far, things are going really well,” Kaufman said of the beta test.

He anticipates expanding the beta test to include other transit agencies and other modes of transportation, such as trains and bike sharing. The company hasn’t yet decided when it plans to launch the expanded version of Ride.

This story was originally published March 31, 2016 at 9:10 AM with the headline "TransLoc to ramp up hiring after raising $8M."