Wickedride Adventure Services Pvt. Ltd, which runs separate online motorbike and scooter rental platforms, has raised Rs 62.13 crore (around $9.1 million at current exchange rates) in a fresh funding round led by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Accel Partners.
According to the Bengaluru-based startup’s latest filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, Raghunandan Gangappa - the co-founder of ride-hailing firm TaxiForSure, which was acquired by Ola - also participated in the round.
In February, VCCricle had reported that Wickedride was in the process of closing a $10 million funding round. This was soon after the firm had raised $1.5 million from the family investment office of Sutures India chairman Chandrasekhar Gopalan.
The latest round, which was secured earlier this month, valued the company at roughly around Rs 130-132 crore (around $19 million), as per back-of-the -envelope estimates by VCCircle.
It could not be immediately ascertained whether this was the company’s Series-B round.
Separate email queries sent to Varun Agni and Anil G, two of Wickedride’s co-founders, as well as Sequoia and Accel Partners did not elicit responses till the time of publishing this report.
WickedRide
Wickedride Adventure Services Pvt. Ltd was started in 2014 by Vivekanand Hallekere along with Varun Agni and Anil G. The company operates two different entities for its online bike and scooter rental ventures.
WickedRide is its premium motorbike rental platform, where users can rent from a fleet which includes brands such as Harley Davidson, Benelli, Royal Enfield, Kawasaki, Triumph, Ducati, KTM and Americana.
Users can rent the bike on an an hourly, weekly and monthly basis. The service is available across more than 10 locations including Bengaluru, Mysore, Jaipur, Manipal, Ahmedabad, Gokarna and even New Zealand, according to information available on WickedRide’s website.
In 2016, Uber had partnered with WickedRides to offer premium motorcycle ride services, as part of its ‘Uber Moto’ offering which was later shuttered as it was found to be in violation of the regulations.
The Metro Bikes arm of the business offers motorbikes and scooters on hire primarily for urban commutes and last-mile connectivity.
Users can avail the one-way rental service which allows them to pick up the bike from a designated location and drop it off in another one.
This service is also available across more than 10 locations across India.
Metro Bikes also offers a monthly subscription-based plan where a user can pick a bike/scooter from a metro station, take it home and drop it back there the next morning.
Recently, the firm launched this service in association with Bengaluru Metro Rail across 33 metro stations in the city.
Earlier this month, The Economic Times had reported that Omidyar Network and Hero Group’s Sunil Munjal were in advanced talks to separately invest in Metro Bikes.
Deals in the Space
A few ventures in the broader online vehicle rental space have raised funding in recent months.
In April, the parent of online scooter rental platform Vogo raised $7 million (Rs 45.5 crore) in funding led by homegrown ride-hailing major Ola.
In February this year, car rental startup Zoomcar raised $27.6 million (Rs 176 crore) from automotive major Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd as part of a $40 million Series C round.
Before that, Bengaluru-based self-riding bike rental company Ontrack raised an undisclosed amount in seed investment from Diverse Middle East FZE, a Dubai-based family office, and others.
