Rapido which is a bike taxi aggregator has collected funds worth $52 million in a new financing round. Rapido is slowly trying to find a space in the field dominated by Ola and Uber in the South Asian market.
Rapido’s Series C financing round was funded by Shell Ventures, Yamaha, Kunal Shah of CRED, Amarjit Singh Batra of Spotify India, and Positive Moves Consulting. The existing investors including Pawan Munjal of Hero Group, Westbridge, Nexus Venture Partners, and Everblue Management also participated in this round. To date, Rapido has collected a total of $130 million.
The six-year-old startup has its two-wheeler service in about 100 Indian cities. The company claims that it has over 15 million customers and 1.5 million driver-partners who are called captains. The company has also entered the three-wheeler space which it witnessed a 4x growth since last year. The services are offered in 26 cities. The startup also claims an 85% recovery from the slump the pandemic had created. The growth can be attributed to the growing e-commerce and hyperlocal delivery opportunities in India.
Rapido’s co-founder Aravind Sanka said in a statement that “Even though our product and business model are lucrative and have the potential to churn out an exceptional revenue, this fundraising indicates more of the investors’ confidence in us than the need for capital.”
He hopes that the startup will gain more customers in the next 18 months. The funds will be used to expand its technology and hire more people. What made Rapido different from Ola and Uber is the effectiveness of two-wheelers and three-wheelers in the urban cities of India. They can easily avoid much traffic and is more affordable. Ola and Uber are also entering the two-wheeler and three-wheeler space. Ola has also recently launched its own electric scooters Ola S1 and S1 Pro.
