India motorcycle taxi platform Rapido gets $55m Series B

The $55 million round also featured WestBridge Capital, Bace Capital – an India and Southeast Asia-focused firm established by a team that spun out from Alibaba Group and Ant Financial – and Nexus Venture Partners. It was previously reported that the post-deal valuation would be $200 million.

Much like Go-Jek prior to its expansion into multiple verticals, Rapido operates an app that connects motorcycle riders with prospective passengers. The goal is to provide low-cost daily commuting services by efficiently utilizing the 200 million motorcycles already on India's roads, while simultaneously easing congestion and pollution problems. Most of its users are tier-two and tier-three cities.

The new funding will go towards technology upgrades as the company looks to expand its footprint to cover 100 cities – with a daily order volume of one million – by the end of the year. At present, it is present in 75 cities, has over one million drivers and 10 million registered customers. As recently as January, Rapido was in 16 cities and processing 2.5 million orders per month.

Competitors include Ola and Uber, both of which have introduced motorbike services in India. VC investors have also provided funding to several scooter rental platforms, with Bounce closing a $72 million Series C round in June led by B Capital Group and Falcon Edge Capital. At the end of last year, Ola committed $100 million worth of inventory to Vogo, which was used to add 100,000 scooters to its network.

Rapido received approximately $11 million in Series A funding earlier this year led by Nexus and Hong Kong-based Integrated Capital. Seed investors Astarc Ventures, Skycatchr, and AdvantEdge also took part in the round.

Shunwei, which was co-founded by Lei Jun, who also leads smart phone brand Xiaomi, made its debut investment in India in early 2017, backing used car trading platform Truebil. It has since participated in rounds for the likes of Zomato, Mech Mocha, Cashify, ShareChat, KrazyBee, Pratilipi, Vokal, and Meesho. In Southeast Asia, it has invested in Go-Jek and Akulaku.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Technology
• India
• China
• Shunwei Capital Partners
• WestBridge Capital Partners
• Bace Capital
• TMT
• Transportation