Bike taxi startup Baxi has raised an undisclosed amount of funds from a clutch of investors in a fresh round.
New investors in this round comprise of Ramesh Awtaney, founder and chairman of information technology firm ISON Technologies, Mohit Khurana and Deekshant Sahrawat, co-founders of Roots Education, along with Ashish Chhaparwal, founder of children transportation firm KidzJet. Existing investor Alok Mittal, co-founder of fintech startup Indifi Technologies also participated in the round.
The fresh capital will be used to launch its hyperlocal ordering app for groceries, pharmaceuticals, food and dairy products, and personal care products.
Baxi has partnered with Patanjali, an Indian consumer goods company for its hyperlocal ordering app. It will also be providing Patanjali employees with bikes at all their retail outlets, as a part of the partnership.
Pankaj Swadeshi, head of stores at Patanjali, said, “This scheme will make home delivery extremely efficient and affordable for Patanjali customers. Store executives will make the deliveries on their own bikes, making this faster and more efficient than existing home delivery solutions,”.
Baxi is also looking to partner with another three to five national retail brands by the end of this month, the company has not disclosed any names yet.
Baxi, the last mile connectivity startup was founded in 2014, by Ashutosh Johri, and Manu Rana, both alumni of IIT Delhi. It provides an opportunity for low-income workers with motorbikes to get a side income by providing services like field service, courier service, hyperlocal delivery, along with last mile logistics. It is currently functional in parts of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. As claimed by Johri, the startup is now operationally profitable.
The startup had last raised $1.4 million in a seed funding round from a bunch of high net-worth individuals, back in November 2015.
Other competitors for Baxi in the bike taxi domain include Bikxie, Rapido, along with Uber and Ola, who are also offering bike services in parts of some cities.