Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

Bengaluru-based bike and scooter rental startup Metro Bikes has raised ₹84 crores ($12.2 million) in series A funding led by Sequoia India, Accel Partners, along with participation from Raghunandan G, founder of TaxiForSure, and a consortium of other investors. The startup will be renaming the startup from Metro Bikes to Bounce.

After the investment, Shailesh Lakhani, MD, Sequoia Capital India Advisors and Anand Daniel, Partner, Accel Partners, will be joining the Metro Bikes’ board.

The funds raised will be used to expand its network in Bengaluru, along with enhancing its delivery model by investing in technology innovations. It also plans to expand to other major cities in the country by 2020.

Metro Bikes was launched by Vivekananda Hallekere, Anil Giriraju, and Varun Aghi in 2016, while its parent company Wicked Rides was launched in 2014. Wicked Rides, provides luxury bike rental service. While, Metro Bikes was launched to provide a smart mobility solution by giving its users the option of one-way rental, which lets the users rent the bike from anywhere, travel to their destination, and drop off the bikes at any location.

Talking about the investment, Shailesh Lakhani, MD, Sequoia Capital India Advisors, said, “There has been a lot of attention on four-wheel shared mobility across the world. While it makes sense in other markets, a service like Bounce has immense potential in India, where limitations of space and cost have always made two-wheelers more popular. Bounce has the potential to be a category creator – being the first to offer an extremely cost-effective, personalised, motorised transport that fills a critical need gap in the Indian market.”

The startup is currently operational in cities like Bengaluru, Mysore, Jaipur, Udaipur, Ahmedabad, Hampi, among others. The average cost per kilometre is about ₹6 per kilometre. Metro Bikes has also launched bicycles and electric bicycles called pedelecs.

Metro Bikes is looking to add another 10,000 scooters to its fleet in the next six months, while this number is expected to reach 30,000 over the next year. Along with bike rentals, the startup also provides bikes to delivery agents working in the food and grocery delivery companies.

By Varun

Startups | Books | Ideas

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