India motorcycle taxi platform raises $52m
Indian motorcycle taxi platform Rapido has raised $52 million in Series C funding featuring the corporate VC arm of Shell.
Nexus Venture Partners, WestBridge Capital Partners, Everblue Management, QED Innovation Labs, Motherson Lease Solutions, Positive Moves Consulting, and Yamaha also participated. They were joined by a number of individual investors, including Pawan Munjal, chairman and CEO of Hero MotorCorp, and Amarjit Singh Batra, managing director of Spotify India.
It brings total funding to date to around $130 million, including a $55 million Series B in 2019 that featured WestBridge, Nexus, Shunwei Capital, and Bace Capital, an India and Southeast Asia-focused firm established by a team that spun out form Alibaba Group and Ant Group. The latest round values the company at $235 million, according to The Economic Times.
Rapido offers an app that connect motorcycle taxi drivers with passengers. The idea is to facilitate low-cost daily commuting in a way that eases India’s air pollution problems by optimizing the use of a large existing two-wheeler population, while also easing urban congestion. The service is currently available in about 100 mostly lower-tier cities, up from 75 at the time of the time of the Series B.
New business lines include a three-wheeler service that is said to have grown 4x since its launch last year and now covers 26 cities. Rapido claims business has recovered to 85% of pre-pandemic levels and plans to lift its number of users from 15 million currently to 50 million in the next 18 months. Recent traction has been attributed in part to a rise in hyperlocal e-commerce deliveries.
Rapido faces significant competition in the form of Ola and Uber, both of which have introduced motorcycle service in India. Ola received a $500 million pre-IPO round last month as it advanced plans to establish the world’s largest electric motorcycle factor, capable of manufacturing 10 million bikes a year.
Other players in this space include scooter rental platform Bounce, which raised a $105 million Series D last year with plans to introduce electric vehicles to its fleet. Meanwhile, Vogo, a similar scooter company has raised a $19 million Series C to explore a model that combines traditional rentals with ride-sharing.
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