Delivery startup Roadrunnr speeds ahead with electric scooters

BENGALURU: Roadrunnr, a seven-month-old startup that fulfills deliveries for businesses, is pioneering the use of electric scooters on its delivery runs.
The scooters, which are sourced from Bengaluru-based startup Go GreenBOV , have an internal GPS and in-built sensors, come with a 10-year warranty.

The company is piloting the scheme with 15 motorbikes and is planning to scale up to 100 this month.

“At any point in time, I can track the petrol usage and speed and location of each bike in a much more scaleable way,“ said co-founder and CEO Mohit Kumar.

“The hardware is pretty solid, so why not use it?“ Kumar explained that the company had previously been spending close to . 300 a day on pet` rol for each delivery vehicle, which has been dramatically reduced to Rs 10 with rechargeable electric scooters. Each motorbike can run for 120 kilometres -a full day's delivery load -after just a two hour charge. Moreover, the government is currently subsidising up to . 29,000 on the cost of electric ` bikes under the FAME-India scheme launched in April.

Currently, most delivery boys in India use their own motorbikes.With the purchase of Roadrunnrdedicated scooters, the company can now take on fleet members who do not own vehicles and compensate them per order delivered.

Roadrunnr, started by former Flipkart employees Kumar and Arpit Dave, has most recently received Series A funding from Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures.

“We want to encourage other companies to do so,“ said Kumar.