No one knows when the fortunes of those who work hard will change… Something similar happened with a person who completed his studies from IIT. After leaving IIT, Pawan Guntupalli first worked abroad, but he did not feel like working there. After coming back to India he wanted to do something new. He left his job with a salary of lakhs of rupees and came back to the country and kept working on new ideas for two years, but he failed 7 times.
Pawan Guntupalli had told in an interview that even after failing so many times, he did not give up. People around him used to say that he was wasting his life, but his family members had full support. Finally the time came when he started a cab providing company with a brilliant idea. This company is none other than Rapido, which today provides services from bike to cab in many cities and now it has got a big success.
Unicorn Bunny Rapido
Ride-sharing platform Rapido has received $200 million in Series E funding led by Westbridge Capital. With this new investment, Rapido’s post-money valuation has reached $1.1 billion. That means now this company has joined the Unicorn Club. Arvind Sanka, co-founder of Rapido, said that with this new investment of capital, we are eager to explore and expand our offering, so that we can meet the growing needs of our customers.
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Rapido started with an idea
After failing in startup 6 times, Pawan Guntupalli started ‘theKarrier’ along with his friend Arvind Sanka. He used to provide intercity logistics services through mini trucks, but this business also did not take off. Due to the problems of traffic jam and old unsuccessful business, Pawan Guntupalli got the idea that why not start a bike cab service? What happened next, he along with his friends Arvind Sanka and Rishikesh SR started Rapido in the year 2015, this company was started to provide facilities from bike to taxi. Today the valuation of this company is Rs 9237 crore ($1.1 billion).
There was a big competition with Ola-Uber
When Rapido was launched, Ola and Uber were the lead players in providing cabs. They used to provide only car and taxi services. On the other hand, people knew less about bikes. Pawan Guntupalli started Rapido from Bangalore. For this he kept the base fare at Rs 15 and after that he kept a charge of Rs 3 for every kilometer. But doing so much did not bring success. Rapido started its cab service along with bike service. Just a month after the launch of Rapido, Uber and Ola also launched their bike services, due to which big investors started getting scared of coming into Rapido.
How did Rapido become the market leader?
In the year 2016, Rapido got the support of Pawan Munjal, Chairman and Managing Director of Hero MotoCorp. After him, AdvantEdge and some others also joined. Now Rapido has launched 400 bikes in Bangalore, Delhi and Gurgaon. By January 2016, the company had 5000 users, while by December 2016 this number increased to 1,50,000. Today, Rapido has expanded its reach beyond metro cities, establishing its presence in over 100 cities including Tier 2 and 3 cities across the country and has emerged as a leader in the sector.
