Top bike-taxi startups in India that are riding the wave of sharing economy

With an increased need to decongest our roads, and public transport still found wanting, these bike-taxi startups help consumers adapt to more sustainable methods of commuting.

In today’s highly populated cities, bike-taxi or scooter-sharing startups are a good alternative to free up congested roads. Working much like Ola or Uber, which incidentally have their own bike-taxi services, these startups allow a consumer to easily book a ride at the click of a button. 

Most of the bike-taxi startups have started out with a focus on last-mile connectivity. Globally, Gojek is one of the top players in the space. The Indonesian unicorn has presence in multiple Southeast Asian countries and also has a global tech centre in Bengaluru. Then there is uberMoto by Uber and Ola’s bike taxi service. 

A study by AlphaBeta Analytics suggests that globally, Uber users save 38 percent time with uberMOTO and nine to 18 percent with uberX compared to modes of transportation available earlier. 

A report by UITP India states that India’s public transport is not able to keep pace with the increase in demand, thus leading to an increase in ownership of private transportation in the past two decades. 

The report quotes Vahan digital registry, which pegs the number of registered digitised vehicles at 195.6 million as of July last year. Also, 75 percent of the registered vehicles in India are motorcycles or two-wheelers.

While scooter or bike-taxi sharing startups are growing in number, some of the key ones include: 

Baxi 

Baxi is a Gurugram-based bike-taxi service platform. It was founded in 2014 by Ashutosh Johri and Manu Rana. Currently operating primarily around Delhi-NCR, Baxi has raised $1.4 million seed funding in November 2015. The company, which is reportedly in talks to raise fresh funds, is operationally profitable. 

Bikxie

Founded in 2016 by Mohit Sharma, Divya Kalia and Dennis Ching, Bikxie offers bike-taxi services for last-mile connectivity in Gurugram and Faridabad. The team raised funding of $315,200 in January. Bikxie also offers an all-women service known as Bikxie Pink. The team claims to be on the path to profitability.

Vogo 

Founded two years ago by Anand Ayyadurai, Padmanabhan Balakrishnan and Sanchit Mittal, Vogo is a dockless scooter sharing company. The platform lets consumers rent scooters for short, one-way trips to different locations across Bengaluru and Hyderabad. The consumers are charged Rs 5 per kilometre. 

Rapido

Founded in 2015 by Aravind Sanka, Pavan G, and Rishikesh SR, Rapido has over 4,000 bikes in Bengaluru and over thousand in Gurugram. In 2016, Rapido had over 50,000 app downloads and has completed more than 1,25,000 rides. The company claims that 85 percent of its rides are from repeat customers with 10 percent of them being women.

Bounce (previously Metro Bikes)

Founded by Vivekananda HR, Varun Agni and Anil G in 2015, Bengaluru-based dockless sharing company Metro Bikes (now Bounce) raised $12.2 million Series-A funding led by Sequoia India and Accel Partners last week. The average cost per kilometre is at Rs 6, and the team claims to have seen over 2 lakh downloads on its Android and iOS platform so far.