The company has been piloting cabs in Hyderabad for a few months now, and is at an “advanced test stage”, a spokesperson for Rapido told ETtech. “We’ve gotten a fantastic response so far and it has given us confidence about the model working out,” the spokesperson claimed, declining to comment on the expansion of cab services to other cities or the timeline.
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Rapido is best known for being one of the first firms to introduce ride hailing services through two-wheelers, which it then expanded to three-wheelers. In the three-wheeler section, it competes with the likes of Uber, Ola and ONDC-backed Namma Yatri. In the two wheeler segment, it competes with Ola and Uber in a few cities.
‘Following linear logic’
“We followed the linear logic of going from two-wheelers to three-wheelers, and now to four wheelers… the idea is to stick to our aggregator personality and not change that nature by, say, owning vehicles,” the Rapido spokesperson added.
Rapido runs operations in over 100 cities, according to its website. The firm last raised $180 million at a valuation of $820 million in April 2022, with the likes of food major Swiggy, two-wheeler maker TVS Motor, and venture firms West Bridge Capital and Nexus Venture Partners investing.
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Competition heating up
The Indian cab-hailing space has seen competition intensify over the past two years, with specialised service providers such as EV-only fleetrunner BluSmart and premium service provider Shoffr entering the market, which was once dominated by Uber and Ola. Meanwhile, firms such as Everest Fleet, which owns commercial vehicles and provides them to both Uber and Ola, are also gaining ground. Everest raised Rs 50 crore (around $6 million) from private equity firm Paragon Partners on September 21.
At the same time, Rapido’s core two-wheeler and three-wheeler markets have also seen plenty of disruption. While ONDC-backed Namma Yatri has tied up with local autorickshaw unions, Ola restarted its bike-taxi service in Bengaluru on September 16 using its electric scooter fleet.
Under the lens
The operation of bike-taxis has also come under scrutiny from authorities across the country. In Bengaluru, the state government has hinted at acting against bike-taxi aggregators after protests by the Federation of Karnataka State Private Transport Association. Karnataka has had an electric bike-taxi policy in place since 2021.
In Delhi, on the other hand, the government has threatened to impound petrol-run bike-taxis multiple times over the past few years. A draft policy paper issued by the Delhi government also proposes allowing only electric bike taxis in the city.
