Bengaluru-based two-wheeler rental startup Bounce said Tuesday it has raised USD 6.5 million in debt financing from Temasked-backed InnoVen Capital to drive deeper electric vehicle (EV) integration, multi-city expansion, platform play, and to help accelerate profitability.
Bounce has raised a total of USD 12 million in debt from Innoven within 18 months. Earlier in January this year, the company had raised USD 105 million in Series D funding round led by Accel and B Capital which is backed by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. It has raised a total of USD 200 million in equity funding.
“InnoVen has backed our vision from very early days and been an incredible partner to work with. As we expand to more cities and towns, we will transition to a diverse shared mobility platform to enable various mobility options as per the specific needs of each customer,” said Vivekananda HR, CEO and co-founder, Bounce.
Bounce provides electric as well as fuel-based two-wheelers that users can rent using its app in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. It also has a small fleet of bicycles which it acquired from the Chinese mobility startup Ofo when the company shut up shop in India in 2018.
It competes with startups such as Vogo, which recently raised USD 100 million from mobility major Ola, Yulu, Drivezy, and a few young companies such as Zypp and Onn Bikes. On the other hand, bigger companies like Ola and Uber are also vying for the market share. While Ola has a separate arm Ola Electrics to capture the four-wheeler EV space, Uber has been slow in its approach. It recently announced its plan to increase its EV fleet from the current 350 to 1500 by the end of 2020. It is working on two and three-wheelers EV fleet in India and has started a pilot in Chandigarh—one of the most well-planned Indian cities—in partnership with an EV company SUN Mobility.
The electric vehicle market is, although nascent in India, showing steady growth—both from users as well as service providers. A large part of the success of EV in India depends on faster policy changes from the government with respect to creating a wide-casting charging station network—a major deterrent to the sector. Earlier this year, India announced to set up 2,636 charging stations for electric vehicles across 62 cities. In comparison, China installed 1000 EV charging stations per day.