Dunzo set for a ride, UberMoto watch out

Think of successful startups in Bangalore and Dunzo will definitely feature on the list. The company, after receiving $12 million from Google in a series B funding, caught a lot of attention as this was the search engine giant’s first direct investment in an Indian company. Dunzo registered revenues of $10.8 million in FY17 and grew more than four times over FY16, according to its filings with the ministry of corporate affairs.

The app based runner service from Bengaluru plans to launch its bike service by the end of this month in Gurugram. The company currently has 400 weekly active delivery men in Bengaluru. Economic Times had earlier reported that the company was planning to add bike services to its host of services on its app. “It’s just a logical expansion of our operations,” says Kabir Biswas, founder, Dunzo.

Expected to price it competitively to keep it affordable, the company, though Bengaluru based, is piloting this service in Gurugram because each state has its set of rules. Davis Wang, CEO, Mobike, an international bike-sharing service from China, launched in Pune in May, went on record to mention how he urged countries to have clearer regulations for sharing economy, South China Morning Post had reported.


Bike sharing is not exactly new in India. However, a company like Dunzo, expanding horizontally, is definitely first of its kind. “The primary competitors of the company is Swiggy, Ola and Uber. It’s basically logistics. And if you are in the logistics business, it’s important to understand and utilise your delivery crew in the most efficient manner.” adds Biswas.

“Deliveries are horizontal, it doesn’t matter what you are delivering. On an average, traffic for food delivery is 6 hours; morning, afternoon, lunch and dinner, and 4 hours for transportation traffic. Dunzo traffic is almost for 20 hours already. In an effort to make sure that we optimise our delivery men, it’s important that we get in to the bike-sharing model. We already know how the business of logistics work, this just makes sense. Dunzo Bike will help us exactly with that, optimisation of our delivery model.”

Others in the game
Lack of government involvement and support, combined with poor quality of roads, made bike sharing a tough business in India. The industry is going through a change where motorbikes, which are cheaper than cabs, are slowly picking up. Rapido, one of the homegrown brands, launched in December 2014, is one of the few pure bike-sharing companies in the country. With four rounds of funding totaling $773 thousand, the company is currently operational in four cities – Bangalore, Hyderabad, Gurugram and Mysore.

Companies such as Ola and Uber also have their bike-sharing models, and these offerings are slowly and steadily becoming popular amongst the consumers, who prefer more affordable modes of transportation. UberMoto, the bike-sharing service is available in nine cities across the country and has been around since 2016 in Hyderabad, which was its pilot city. The most recent cities where the service was launched were Amritsar and Kanpur.

Ola, in December 2017, launched Ola Pedal, closer to the Ofo and Mobike model of China, where bike sharing is limited to bicycles and not motorbikes. The company launched its greener alternative at IIT-Kanpur as a pilot.

“Deliveries is a tricky business. Pillion, pick/drop, food, quick consumables are generally the four funnels of delivery business. “We were already present in the last three. The last two is expected sometimes to be free of delivery charges. So what businesses need to do is take the money from the first two funnels and pump into the remaining two. Like I said, Dunzo Bike is the most natural progression of growth for us,” Biswas says.

“In all seriousness, we’re always looking at ways to improve and scale the business, providing users options in how they unlock access to their cities. We believe we’re in the business of saving time - whether that’s by getting your daily errands done or by cutting your travel time by half with bikes, over cars,” adds Biswas.