Yamaha invests in bike taxi startup Rapido’s $52 million funding round

• Shell Ventures, CRED’s Kunal Shah, Spotify India’s CEO Amarjit Singh Batra also participated in the round.
• Rapido plans to use this funding to onboard 50 million new users in the next 18 months.
• The company claims to have over 1.5 million driver partners, serving 15 million users

Japanese motorcycle manufacturer Yamaha has participated in bike taxi platform Rapido’s latest $52 million funding round. The Bengaluru-based startup plans to use this funding to onboard 50 million new users in the next 18 months.

Several new investors participated in the round such as Shell Ventures, CRED’s founder Kunal Shah, Spotify India’s chief executive Amarjit Singh Batra and Positive Moves Consulting.

Existing investors Hero group’s Pawan Munjal, Hero Group, Westbridge, Nexus Ventures and Everblue Management also participated in the round.

A part of the funding would be further used to invest in cutting edge technology and innovation, hiring talent and fueling its growth across the country.

“Today, Rapido is the largest bike taxi player in the country operating in around 100 cities. 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,” Rapido’s cofounder Aravind Sanka said.

Founded in 2015 by Sanka, Pavan Guntupalli and SR Rishikesh, Rapido is a bike taxi service that is spread across 100 cities in India. The platform claims to have over 1.5 million captains, known as driver partners on the platform, serving over 15 million customers.

The company largely offered business-to-customer (B2C) services until last year. However, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the company to try out other business models as well in order to keep the cash flow running while customers moved to a work-from-home setting during nationwide lockdown.

Rapido started expanding its business-to-business (B2B) offering (launched in 2018) last year, under which it offers last-mile logistics service to retail stores, e-commerce players and restaurants. It also launched Rapido Stores last month to allow both online and offline businesses to deliver products to the customers.

It claims to have witnessed a strong business recovery of 85% as compared to pre-covid.

Rapido has raised $130 million in funding to date from several marquee investors like Westbridge AIF, Nexus Ventures, Sabre Investment, Skycatcher LLC, BAce Fund, Integrated Growth Capital, among others.
The startup was a competitor to another Bengaluru-based bike rental startup Bounce, which decided to move to an electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing mode last year.

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