Motorycle and scooter-sharing start-up Bounce is planning to expand in India.
Currently, the company is present in Bengaluru and Hyderabad, apart from six smaller cities like Mangaluru and Vijayawada. Bounce is now aiming to foray into Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and the NCR.
Anil G, Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder, Bounce, said, “We have been successful in proving this is a solution that appeals to a very large population. Our efforts would be to scale up to 10-12 major cities and 100 smaller cities in the coming few quarters. We believe (tapping) smaller cities is a big opportunity, as they don’t have all the (transportation) facilities like in big cities.”
The start-up is further eyeing to venture into markets abroad.
“We believe this kind of solution can be deployed in multiple geographies. Though our main focus remains on India, we are definitely looking at cities outside of India as well where we see the potential for this kind of solution to exist, like in Europe and Southeast Asia,” Anil stated.
$105 million recent fundraise
Bounce has recently secured $105 million in Series-D funding round led by Accel, a leading venture capital entity, and B Capital Group, a global technology fund. The round has also seen participation from existing investors including Accel Partners India, Chiratae Ventures, Falcon Edge, Maverick Ventures, Omidyar Network India, Qualcomm Ventures and Sequoia Capital India.
With this fundraise, the company is now valued at over $500 million, compared from previous funding round last June when the estimate was $220 million,
The funding takes the total raised to $194 million. It will fuel a deeper electric vehicle (EV) integration and help drive profitability.
The company further aims to make its offerings form-agnostic or to tailor its mobility solution to the city or town it gets into. Apart from the multi-city expansion, the fresh capital will also help access to technology more of skilled people.
Vivekananda H R, Chief Executive and Co-Founder, stated, “The main vision of Bounce is to democratise mobility. This fresh funding will help us.”
Anand Daniel, Partner at Accel, added, “Bounce has been a pioneer in the shared mobility sector. The brand has identified one of the key gaps in the mobility sector and managed to provide a convenient and cost-efficient solution with tech capabilities. The innovations around the keyless mechanism of using a scooter, coupled with other IoT modifications, make Bounce very unique. We are excited to continue partnering with the Bounce team.”
Kabir Narang, Co-Head of Asia at B Capital Group, said, “Bounce achieved over 16 million rides in 2019 and has the potential to reach over 200 million customers across the country, with a highly engaged community of riders.”
