Bike sharing startup Bounce has raised $72 million as a part of its series C round. B Capital Group, a global technology fund and Falcon Edge Capital, a New York-based hedge fund led the investment, said the company.
The company said that the round also witnessed the participation from Accel Partners India, Accel Partners USA, Chiratae Ventures, Maverick Ventures, Omidyar Network India, Sequoia Capital India and Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of Qualcomm Incorporated. The funding will go towards the company's plan to expand its presence nationally, especially in smart cities and will also be deployed towards strengthening the tech.
The latest round takes the total capital raised by Bounce to over $92 million. This comes after a recent $8 million Series B funding. In August last year, Accel Partners India, Omidyar Network India and Sequoia Capital led $10.2 million Series A funding round. Prior to that Bounce raised a pre-series A round of $2 million, funded by Captain Prashant Priya and LG Chandrasekar, co-founder Sutures India.
Bounce claimed that it has deployed a fleet of over 5000 keyless scooters in BangaloreK. The app allows the users to pick up a scooter and drop it at any legitimate parking spot. Bounce plans to introduce over 50,000 vehicles during the current year.
“This round of funding will help accelerate our expansion nationally across various cities. We appreciate the ongoing support of our investors who have continuously believed in the growth trajectory of Bounce. Also, our journey so far wouldn't have been possible without the support of our loyal customer base,” said Vivekananda H.R, CEO & Co-founder of Bounce.
“Bounce has done a fantastic job in innovating a keyless scooter product offering that has been well received by the consumers. The healthy utilisation rates of scooters and high repeat behaviour from consumers prove that this model is well suited for mass market adoption as an intracity mobility solution and we are excited to see the company scale this in Bangalore and beyond,” said Anand Daniel, Partner at Accel Partners.
“The innovations around the hardware aspect of the product, specifically the keyless mechanism of using a scooter coupled with other IOT modifications, provide strong defensibility to the company and we firmly believe Bounce will be the category winner in the long term,” said Daniel.
