Buffalo-based Rally has stormed back from the brink of pandemic-induced oblivion, with business volume catching up and then surpassing 2019 levels.
Co-founders Siheun Song and Numaan Akram moved to Buffalo after their company won a $500,000 prize in the 43North business competition in 2019.
Rally allows bus riders and companies to create on-demand trips, an operation that picks up steam around transportation-heavy holidays such as Thanksgiving and popular events like professional football games. Wisconsin and Buffalo are Rally’s biggest markets for National League Football games.
But the transportation industry was decimated by the pandemic, and Rally saw business ground to a halt. Akram said friends even began asking him what he was going to do next.
As society began to open up again, however, Rally’s market returned. While most transportation industry companies are trying to get back to pre-pandemic revenue numbers, Rally zoomed right past them. The startup has also benefited from other busing operations cutting back significantly or shutting down.
“We’ve grown 10 times in 10 months,” Akram said. “We saw an opportunity in the market and we’ve been out there letting people know that we’re still here.”
Rally has caught the attention of investors who use the environmental, social and governance (ESG) framework in their funding decisions. The company closed a seed round this year led by Elemental Accelerator. Elemental was created by Emerson Collective, a philanthropy led by Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
“There is a big trend of investors thinking about the climate and sustainability,” Akram said. “Elemental has been doing it for years and they invested in us because buses are one of the greenest forms of transportation.”
Rally is in the planning stages of a Series A round for next year. Akram and Song moved to Buffalo with a fully built platform and remain the company’s only local employees, but they expect to begin building out an engineering team in Buffalo next year as they refocus their attention on a new version of their software.
Rally is among 32 local startups that have raised private, growth-oriented capital this year. Others include Jerry ($103 million), Squire ($60 million), Centivo ($51 million), Tackle.io ($35 million), Torch Labs ($25 million), CleanFiber ($11.9 million), Circuit Clinical ($7.5 million), Kangarootime ($6 million), SomaDetect ($6 million), Kickfurther ($5.9 million), MimiVax ($5 million), Garwood Medical Devices ($4 million), Joblio ($4 million), Verivend ($2.5 million), HELIXintel ($1.6 million), Ognomy ($1.37 million), OxiWear ($1.25 million), Patient Pattern ($1.2 million), Ellicottville Greens ($1 million), Immersed Games ($540,000), Braid Babes ($415,000), MemoryFox ($380,000), Zizo Technologies ($200,000), AirExpert ($200,000), Thimble ($165,000), Immunaeon ($100,000), Oro Sports ($100,000), Real Talk ($100,000), Alo ($100,000), HiOperator (undisclosed) and Classavo (undisclosed).
