No one knows when the luck 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 like it there. After coming back to India, he wanted to do something new. He left a job that paid 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 ruining his life, but his family was fully supportive. Finally the time came when he started a cab providing company on a brilliant idea. This company is none other than Rapido, which today provides services from bike to cab in many cities and has now 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 is, now this company has joined the unicorn club. Rapido co-founder Arvind Sanka said that with this new investment of capital, we are eager to explore and expand our offerings, so that we can meet the growing needs of our customers.
Rapido started with an idea
After failing in startup 6 times, Pawan Guntpalli started ‘theKarrier’ along with his friend Arvind Sanka. They used to provide intercity logistics services through mini trucks, but this business also did not last long. At the same time, due to the problems of traffic jams and the previous failed business, Pawan Guntpalli got the idea that why not start a bike cab service? Then what, he started Rapido in the year 2015 along with his friends Arvind Sanka and Rishikesh SR, this company was started to provide facilities from bike to taxi. Today the valuation of this company is Rs 9237 crore (1.1 billion dollars).
There was a big competition from Ola-Uber
When Rapido was started, Ola and Uber, which provide cabs, were the lead players. They only provided car and taxi services. On the other hand, people knew less about bikes. Pawan Guntpalli started Rapido from Bangalore. He kept the base fare for this at Rs 15 and after that, he charged Rs 3 for every kilometer. But paying just this 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 service, due to which big investors started fearing to come to Rapido.
How did Rapido become the market leader?
In 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, the situation is that Rapido has expanded its reach beyond metro cities, has established its presence in more than 100 cities including tier 2 and 3 cities across the country and has emerged as a leader in this sector.
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