New York based ridesharing startup Via Transport Inc. has raised $27 million Series B in a round led by Pitango Venture Capital that included Expansion Venture Capital, 83North, Ervington Investments and Hearst Ventures.

The company provides what it calls “on-demand transit” within a small area of the Manhattan borough of New York, including the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Hells Kitchen, Midtown and Midtown East.

Users are able to book via the Via app, and are charged $5 + tax if they’ve pre-paid, or $7 + tax if they pay per ride. The company says that its algorithms match users with a vehicle going their way, and the average wait for a vehicle is 5 minutes.

Chief Executive and founder Daniel Ramot told TechCrunch that he describes Via as a “dynamic bus.”

“When you look at public transit it has fixed routes and schedules,” he added “We see that on-demand transportation in the future will be the same, just smaller and more agile…We’re positioned in a unique space between a bus and an [sic] Uber.”

Interestingly, unlike Uber Inc., Via works exclusively with drivers that are licensed by local taxi associations, avoiding any regulatory issues when it comes to licensing.

Insanity

The new round takes Via’s total funding to $37.1 million, which for a company that literally services a seven square mile area in Manhattan, may be suggested by some to be pure, unadulterated, insanity.

But then again, in 2015, Uber is valued at $41 billion, so maybe the definition of insanity is relative.

In the companies defense, it is looking to expand….to the rest of Manhatten Island, with lofty goals of eventually setting up shop in Chicago and Washington, although they’ll probably need a Series C round in the vicinity of another $10-$20 million for such high-faulitin’ ambitions.

Some argue that what we are seeing in 2015 in a new tech bubble, a repeat of the dot com bubble that ultimately crashed at the end of the 1990’s, and with staggering amounts of money being thrown at a startup that operates in an insanely small area of New York, they may have a point.