With over 1,000 rides a day Tazzobikes vrooms ahead with its unique offerings
Hyderabad based-Tazzobikes gives scooters and bikes on rent starting at Rs 5/km, with no deposit and fuel inclusive fares.
How many times have we travelled in a city, and wished we had a bike to explore around. Waiting for cabs or at a bus station to commute from one point to another is definitely a hassle. Exorbitant fares add to the burden. Taking a cue from his own experience, Priyam Saraswat and three others came together to start Tazzobikes, an on-demand self-ride two-wheeler discovery and accessibility platform.
Here, customers can track the availability of motorbikes at the nearest bike station and request for a free delivery and pick up at the end of the rental or choose to go to the station and collect the vehicle. A user is charged for every kilometre starting at Rs 5. Billing is done through an external GPS fitted across the fleet. Fuel and insurance are complementary with the services.
Priyam Saraswat, Co-founder and CEO, Tazzobikes says, “I believe if we can provide easy access to self-ride vehicles in a nearby radius, it will precisely eliminate the need for an individual mode of transportation. Also, a self-driven mode of commute eliminates the need for a chauffeur and hence provides much better unit economics.”
How it all began
Priyam was working with Schlumberger in Saudi Arabia when he made a visit to Hyderabad.“I had to meet my friends living at the other end of the city. A taxi ride one way cost Rs 600. The next day I tried to look for a bus and although it was a cheaper option, I had to change routes thrice. The buses were congested and travel was uncomfortable. That was when I realised the need for a platform like Tazzobikes,” says Priyam.
Bringing two wheelers to a sharing platform can significantly reduce the commute cost and provide a much better control over the ride, apart from the convenience factor. Tazzobikes is bridging the gap between convenience and pricing in the commuting market.
Priyam started working on refining the idea and was joined by Shivangi Srivastava, Priyank Suthar, and Vikrant Gosain. They began the service in January 2016 in Hyderabad with five bikes. The service has now extended to Bengaluru with over 50 stations available across the two cities.
Getting up to speed
Tazzobikes clocks over 1,000 daily rides with a fleet size of 600 two-wheelers. They run on an asset light model with vendors supplying inventory on the Tazzo platform. They make around 24,000 rides in a month with an average ticket size of Rs 250. The repeat usage is around four times a month per user and is mostly used to run personal errands. Technology plays a key role in this disruption with real-time availability of fleet from nearby stations.
Bookings can be made through Android and iOS applications on mobile phones, company website or through IVR. They claim to have crossed one lakh downloads on Google Play Store and have recently launched the iOS application.
What sets Tazzobikes apart is that the team believes in the self-driven market that utilises rentals for short commutes, as opposed to others. The biggest draws are that there are no deposits and fares are fuel inclusive.
Tazzobikes is also building an in-house IoT product for automation of pickup and delivery process through the user’s smartphone.
Raising funds
Tazzobikes raised an investment of $225,000 and a bridge round from DSG Consumer Partners in October 2016. Prior to that Tazzo also raised an undisclosed amount of angel investment from Kapil Chopra, President of the Oberoi Group.
They plan to expand the fleet size to 2,500 vehicles and 100,000 monthly rides by 2018.
With India being the world’s biggest market for two-wheelers, many big and small bike rentals players are already in the space. RentOnGo, Wheelstreet, Wicked Ride, Royal Brothers, Rent Set Go, Roadpanda are Tazzobikes’ competitors.
