Bengaluru-based shared mobility startup Bounce, has raised $105 million in its Series D funding and leading the investment in this round have been Accel and B Capital. Others to pick their own shares in this round of investment included existing investors, Accel Partners India, Chiratae Ventures, Falcon Edge, Maverick Ventures, Omidyar Network India, Qualcomm Ventures and Sequoia Capital India.
Post this investment, Kabir Narang, General Partner and Co-Head of Asia at B Capital Group, will be joining the Bounce board.
Vivekananda H R, CEO & Co-founder of Bounce said, “Our growth to 120,000 rides a day, in a little over a year and largely in one city, underlines that the future belongs to shared mobility. Shared mobility not only reduces the traffic but also frees up parking spaces, which in Indian cities is anywhere between 12-15% of the total usable real estate. However, the main vision of Bounce is to democratise mobility and thus make a significant socio-economic impact. This fresh funding will help us towards this vision. It will also enable us to build a mobility platform that will help bringing in different forms of mobility solutions, that are hyper-suited to the needs of cities and towns we plan to expand into, over the next few months.”
Bounce has been a pioneer of sorts in the urban mobility space with its dockless and docked scooter hire services. Bengaluru and Hyderabad are the two cities where the dockless scooter rental facility is provided. Being its headquarters, Bengaluru leads with 13,000 vehicles on the road while Hyderabad has 2,000. In another 35 cities, the scooter rental service is made available on the docked type, which means you can only pick up and drop the scooters at specified locations in the city.
Bounce lays stress on electric vehicles being deployed through its rental service and the fresh funds now raised will be deployed towards increasing the proportion of electric scooters as opposed to the ones running on conventional fuels. The EV route offers better profitability for the startup. These funds will also help Bounce expand its operations through to other cities in the country and hire more skilled people to man its operations. With this round, the company has raised $194 million. Bounce is able to achieve a utility level of 9 rides per day on an average per bike and this with its operations concentrated in just one city, Bengaluru.
Bounce and its investors feel it has the potential to reach over 200 million customers across the country. One significant thing observed by the company within this short period of its operations is that close to 40% of the rides have either started or ended at the metro stations. This shows that effective integration of multi-modal transport in cities is very much feasible and can help reduce traffic congestion in cities like Bengaluru while contributing to reducing air pollution.