Bashar Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which owns and operates online bike rental platform wheelstreet.in, has received $120,000 (Rs 77 lakh) in seed funding from Silicon Valley-based startup accelerator Y Combinator.
Wheelstreet was one of the 50 startups, from around the world, selected for the Y Combinator Summer 2017 programme.
The bike rental platform works with independent vendors to help customers select a bike from a range of motorcycles of different pricing structures from across multiple pickup locations.
The company plans to use the money to expand its presence in more Indian cities, besides establishing its footprint in select South Asian countries. “Wheelstreet has been profitable for some time now and we plan to further expand this business pan-India, and to firmly establish our position as market leaders,†said co-founder Pranay Shirvastava.
“India is a hotbed of creativity and talent, and we have seen a growing number of promising startups from the region. Wheelstreet is one such example and we believe it can organise the fragmented bike rental space in Asia,†said Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman.
The startup had previously raised $500,000 from Broadbean Capital services, an early-stage seed and pre-Series A venture fund.
Bengalore-based Bashar Technologies, which was founded in November 2014 by Pranay and Moksha Shrivastava, claims to clock 10,000 monthly bookings for its 160-plus vendor network. It has over 150 superbikes on its platform.
Another bike rental aggregator, Hyderabad-based Tazzo had also secured seed funding of Rs 1.5 crore from DSG Consumer Partners in October 2016.
In December, Mumbai-based bike rental startup ONN Bikes had secured an undisclosed amount in seed funding from Grace Capital Ventures and four other individual investors.
Y Combinator’s winter batch programme also saw the emergence of several Indian stratups, including Mumbai-based daily consumables portal Supr Daily, which received $120,000 from the accelator. The others who made the cut are online payment startup Razorpay, income tax returns e-filing platform ClearTax and co-working space Innov8.
