Rapido to turn cash flow positive next quarter, says CEO Aravind Sanka
The newly turned unicorn added that it has overtaken Bhavish Aggarwal’s Ola in India in terms of number of daily rides.
Bengaluru-based Rapido will turn cash flow positive next quarter, said the ride-hailing company’s Co-founder and CEO Aravind Sanka.
In an interview with YourStory at the inauguration of the company’s new corporate head office in Bengaluru, he said that at Rapido, every category at a segment level is EBITDA positive.
”So, if I take all the costs related to vertical—by cost, by category, cost to category—every category is making money, including corporate costs, where we are a couple of months away or a few months away from being cash flow positive,” Sanka said.
He added that Rapido has doubled its gross merchandise value (GMV) annually and reduced losses by over 50%. The company’s GMV is north of a billion dollars, according to him.
Rapido will file its financial statements “anytime next month.”
The company, earlier this month, raised $200 million in a Series E funding round at a post-money valuation of $1.1 billion, marking its entry into the unicorn club.
Sanka added that Rapido will use the capital to increase the number of its operational cities to almost 250-300 in the next year. At present, the company services more than 100 cities in India.
“The theme is launching new cities and going deeper into existing markets by investing in new use cases and also solving the barriers for people to use ride-sharing,” he said.
The company has onboarded over six million users every month in the last quarter, showcasing the available scope for expansion in the space.
Rapido is also looking to expand into Tier II and III cities in the quick commerce segment with Swiggy and other partners in the future. According to Sanka, “We are figuring out the right fit or figuring out the integrations, and then any time in the next quarter, we should be live with the majority of these players.”
The company would also prepare to launch an initial public offering (IPO) to list on Indian bourses. However, Sanka said there is “not a finite timeline that we’ll be filing by this time. But we’ll be doing everything to be ready to go public.”
”We’ll be ready maybe in the next 18 months,” he said.
Rapido competes with US-based Uber and Bhavish Aggarwal-led Ola in the ride-hailing segment.
According to an Entrackr report, as of March 2024, Rapido had overtaken Ola in terms of number of daily rides.
Sanka said that in terms of orders or number of rides per day, Rapido is now the largest with 2.5 million orders per day.
(The copy was updated with a correction.)
Edited by Suman Singh