Popular bike-taxi aggregator Rapido is eyeing $300 million in revenue in FY 2022-23. Founded in 2015 by Aravind Sanka, Pavan Guntupalli, Rishikesh SR, Rapido operates in over 100 cities across the country. The startup is now looking forward to collaborating with different state governments with the aim to help metro commuters and offer other services. In an exclusive interaction with DNA India, Aravind Sanka, Co-Founder, Rapido said “We have earlier partnered with different state governments, and at present, we are looking forward to collaborating with them on the metro and other services. However, at present, the problem we are facing is the lack of clarity on regulations that are acting as a roadblock in taking forward the collaborations. We are hoping the government would take some precedence from other countries and promote part-time bike captains.”
Rapido currently has over 3 million riders in the bike-taxi segment and over 3 lakh drivers in the auto segment. The company believes that the number will continue to rise with the execution of its expansion plans in tier 2 and 3 cities. Rapido has evolved tremendously post-COVID. As revealed by Aravind Sanka, “We leveraged the adverse situation and turned in our favor to expand our business. Before COVID, we were undertaking around 4.5 lakh orders in bikes and B2B. During lockdowns, our Bike-Taxi service took a hit but we quickly pivoted and accelerated delivery services. All our businesses have scaled beyond pre-COVID levels where B2B is more than 1.5X the pre-COVID levels, and the auto category is in a great position.”
When asked about the EV adaptation by the company, Aravind revealed that Rapido’s EV fleet is available only in two cities – Delhi NCR and Bangalore. In Delhi, the company has about 500 e-bikes, and in Bangalore, about 100 e-bikes. The company claims that it is working with vendors to acquire more EVs and make them available in more cities. The entrepreneur also revealed that most of the Rapido users prefer riding on 100-120 CC bikes like Splendor. “They are the most onboarded two-wheeler on the platform, followed by Honda Activa.”
In the interaction, Aravind Sanka further revealed that the company has also achieved an equal market share as other major existing cab aggregators in key cities such as Hyderabad and Bangalore when it comes to auto rickshaw service. “Moreover, our approach has been to entrench ourselves in Tier 2 & 3 markets that have untapped market potential for ride-hailing services. Considering that we are the largest and the only player in the two-wheeler segment, we are witnessing high demands in our bookings in cities such as Jaipur, Ahmedabad etc. further giving us assurity that the future of ride - hailing aggregators in India has a large scope to grow.” Aravind Sanka said.
.
