Zypp, a Gurugram-based e-scooter startup earlier known as Mobycy, has raised a Rs 15 crore ($2.08 million at current exchange rate) pre-Series A funding round led by the Indian Angel Network Fund and joined by IAN’s members.
The company says it is India’s first fully-electric connected two-wheeler mobility company providing services such as last-mile connectivity, delivery and enterprise commutes. Co-founder Rashi Agarwal said it will use the capital to grow its fleet to 500 scooters within the next few months.
It is also looking to increase its footprint across the National Capital Region and five cities, with a view to eventually expanding across South Asia and Europe. “The plan is to have 20,000 scooters on the road by the end of 2020,” Agarwal added.
IAN Fund founding partner Padmaja Ruparel said Zypp’s goal of promoting the shared electric-mobility space focusing on last-mile services was in line with the overarching vision of the investment vehicle. “The brand’s disruptive value proposition, along with the founding team’s dedication and ambition, is what attracted us to invest in the enterprise,” Ruparel added.
In February, Zypp (then known as Mobycy) was reportedly finalising a $10 million Series A funding round to bankroll its growth plans. Mobycy had raised an undisclosed sum led by Venture Catalysts in November last year. The company was founded by Agarwal, Shivraj Singh and Akash Gupta in 2017.
Operated by BycyShare Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Zypp says it runs on an asset-light model to fund scooters and uses locally manufactured vehicles.
News of the investment by the IAN Fund comes exactly a week after it marked its final close at Rs 375 crore ($53 million), surpassing the corpus target by Rs 25 crore. VCCircle reported in April that the IAN Fund had already raised the corpus target of Rs 350 crore and it was looking to make the final close soon. The fund had the window to raise another Rs 100 crore.
Institutional limited partners (LPs) in the fund include SIDBI’s Fund of Funds for Startups, IIFL, Wadhwani Foundation, Yes Bank, Max Group, Gray Matters Capital and Hyundai. Individual LPs include Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, Hero Group's Sunil Munjal, former Google India head Rajan Anandan and Inventus Capital's Kanwal Rekhi.
The fund, which is largely sector-agnostic, focuses on healthcare and medical devices, software as a service, marketplaces, fintech, big data, artificial intelligence and hardware. It invests between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 50 crore in a startup.
Other investments that the fund has made include air pollution control firm Chakr, waterless solar panel cleaning startup Nocca Robotics, cataloguing startup Flatpebble, local discovery and e-commerce platform Little Black Book and data analytics firm Clootrack.
