In an app-driven world, getting anything from a ride to a safety pin on demand is second nature. You are getting a ride has never been so easy, and Yulu will confirm. Yet, what happens when you click that button? Who services your demands? What technologies are used, and how do experts ensure you get to ride into the sunset happily?
In this edition, Yulu – a dockless cycle and electric bike rental Startup, lets us into their office to peek into how that mere click has behind it an exhaustive set of tasks for each team to give you a comfortable and breezy ride.
How Yulu works
Yulu is a technology-driven mobility platform to enable Integrated Urban Mobility across private and public modes of transport. Using Micro Mobility Vehicles (MMV) through a user-friendly mobile application, Yulu provides seamless, shared, and sustainable first and last-mile connectivity.
Yulu uses IOT, Machine learning, and Cloud computing to deliver a seamless experience via a user-friendly application. Using IoT as the backbone, their dock-less vehicles can be rented seamlessly on a pay-per-use basis. Users can book a ride via the Android or iOS app, and the smart bikes can be unlocked via scanning the QR code.
After running the business with bicycles and understanding the market’s need, they decided to add electric mobility to their service. The market gap decided to design “Yulu Miracle,” a unique battery operated, lightweight, easy to ride, small 2-wheeler. The bike has a maximum speed of 25 km/h, and it comes under the exempted category where the driving license or helmet is not required. It has enabled individuals to take eco-friendly rides at pocket-friendly prices and reduce their carbon footprint.
The team at Yulu is working on the three principles of urban mobility- Accessibility, Availability, and Affordability.
Team and Story behind Yulu
Amit Gupta, Hemant Gupta, RK Misra, and Naveen Dachuri are the Founders of Yulu.
Amit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Yulu, had also founded a mobile marketing platform provider named InMobi. Amit also visited China as part of his former organization, where he became acquainted with bike-sharing apps like Ofo and Mobike. These companies had gained tremendous success in China within two years of starting a business. Ever since these apps were initiated, China saw an 8 percent drop in sales of fuel. It also led to a decrement in people taking cabs to travel short distances.
Amit thought that his own country could use a bike-sharing strategy like the one he saw in China, with a comparable population density and an even worse traffic infrastructure. What he wanted to do was change the network to fit India’s economy and culture. He wanted to start operating Yulu in Bangalore, where the jam caused much inconvenience. Amit also finds traveling from HST Layout to Indiranagar challenging. Thanks to the congested highways, a distance travelled in seven minutes took more than 45 minutes. Many people cannot afford to wait such a long time on the road to work every day. Even traveling on foot was less complicated than using public transit.
After returning to his country, Amit discussed his friends’ ideas and brought together a passionate group. They were the skilled professionals and rising business people willing to work for society. Finally, Amit started Yulu in 2017 along with RK Mishra, Naveen Dachuri, and Hemant Gupta. The founders of Yulu were very inspired and driven by an urge to solve the traffic issues in Bangalore city. For a city with more than 80 lakh vehicles, Yulu was able to lead to drastic changes.
Its Revenue Model and Growth
The Yulu works on a pay-per-use model; a first-time user can register on the application with a refundable security deposit. The “Yulu MOVE + Yulu MIRACLE” plan requires the user to submit a refundable deposit of Rs. 250.
One can ride a Yulu at a low and affordable price. The cost of riding a Yulu Miracle starts at Rs 10 and Rs 10 for every 10 minutes for Miracle Bike usage. Yulu Move users have to pay Rs 10 for the first 30 minutes and Rs 5 for the next 30 minutes.
Yulu has the largest fleet of e-bikes and bicycles in India, with close to 5000 e-bikes (known as Yulu Miracles) and 10,000 bikes (known as Yulu Move). Yulu has 1.5 million registered users and is currently present in Bengaluru, New Delhi, Greater Mumbai, Pune, and Bhubaneswar.
The company has estimated annualized operating revenue of Rs 9.12 crore in FY20. Yulu claims to serve between 30,000-35,000 rides a day, of which 12,000-13,000 comes from its electric scooters. Uber has also partnered with them to make urban commute efficient and eco-friendly.
Also Read: Zenoti – India’s new Unicorn
Challenges faced by Startup
The two challenging factors in introducing the ‘Yulu’ concept in India are:
- Changing the mindset of the people
- Security issues of the bike
The first sign of change in mindset and adoption of Yulu is already visible. Compared to the last three years, the trend of the cycle has grown tremendously. There are classic examples, right from CEOs to individual employees choosing an eco-friendly transport mode to work. They are also aware of air quality and want to reduce the carbon emitted by all fuel-based vehicles. The Yulu team believes that they can make Indian cities pollution-free with government agencies and private organizations.
Funding and Investors
In July 2018, a year after Yulu started the business, they received a seed funding of around 7 million dollars. Bajaj Auto Finance led the series A round of funding in November 2019 and raised a total of 8 million dollars, so Yulu was also able to source from the Bajaj electric vehicles. Yulu used this funding for introducing 100,000 Yulu Miracles to the road of Bangalore, Mumbai, and Bhubaneswar. The latest funding for Yulu was closed in June 2020 despite the panic caused by the pandemic. In this round, the US-based venture capital firm, Rocketship, and existing investors raised 30 crore rupees. The other investors in Yulu are Blume Ventures, 3one4 Capital, Wavemaker, etc.
Future Plans
The goal is to run Yulu service in all Tier 1 and the rest of India’s Smart cities. They envision becoming the largest micro-mobility player in India and increasing its fleet size to 100,000 electric two-wheelers by December 2021 from 15,000 vehicles at present and 1 Million by 2022.
