Founded in November 2015 by Aravind Sanka, Pavan Guntupalli and Rishikesh Sr, Bengaluru-based
Rapido is a platform where one can book a bike ride through a mobile app for travelling solo. Any Rider with valid documents and a two wheeler can offer his/her empty seats while travelling within the city.
Talking about their initial days, Rapido’s founding team told BWDisrupt, “We realised the potential of bike taxi segment while we were trying to solve the problem of utilization (for trucks) for our previous startup thekarrier. Later when we had to pivot, we (founding team) wanted to pursue a problem that can practically impacts millions of people and transportation as easy connectivity for people has always been a concern in this country.”
Customers choose Rapido as a daily commute option and based on the customer behavior, the startup has come up with features like quick book to make their booking experience seamless. Also the company has introduced missed call based booking and no app booking. It is always striving to improve its customer experience and soon coming up with better payment options and features that would significantly bring down the ETA.
Commenting on Rapido’s special key features, the team further added, “Our focus is customer experience and safety. Our customer spends around twenty minutes on an average with the rider. So, we lay emphasis on ensuring that we on-board quality drivers. Our on-boarding process is unique consisting of 4 major stages including vehicle inspection, riding test, background verification and training which ensures high standards for becoming riders on our platform. We measure his speed and have SOS button which is handled by our emergency team which keep both rider and customer safe at all moments. Our entire team has experience in on demand space and which is helping us to stay ahead of competition.”
Rapido has recently raised undisclosed amount in its Pre Series A funding and now looking to raise $10 million for series A in the next 6 to 8 months. The startup monetises by taking a share on every ride it do on its platform.
The company has implemented various initiatives on safety and security and it has been paying off. Currently around 10% of our customer base is female mostly credited to word of mouth from its existing customers.
“Safety and customer experience have to be the foundation on which this segment has to be built. Take no shortcuts because at the end of the day, the goals are simple “Customer safety and security," the team added.
Rapido’s app which is currently available for
Android users, has 50K+ downloads. The startup has executed 1,50,000 rides till today. It is operational in 3 cities (Bangalore, Delhi & Gurgaon) and looking to expand to 5 cities and plans to get 10,000 rides every day in next 6 months.
