eBikeGo Secures $1.5 Million In Pre-Series A Funding

EV logistics platform eBikeGo has raised $1.5Mn Pre-series A funding from a group of Overseas and Indian investors. Sukhbir Singh (Bollywood Singer), Dr. Brahmanand Mohanty (Professor at Asian Institute of Technology), Alparslan Kutukcuoglu (Chairman Of The Board at Mungo Befestigungstechnik AG), Vijay Sivaram (CEO at Quess Corp Limited), Sameer Bulchandani (MD at Avdel India) and Sumant Singhal (CEO at Chiripal Poly Films), amongst others, participated in this round. The startup had raised $0.7Mn last year through an angel round led by Rajesh Sawhney of GSF Accelerator, Rohit Chanana of Sarcha Advisors, Girish Chitale, Startup Buddy and other prominent angel investors, most of who participated in the current round.

EBikeGo plans to scale to 30 cities, touch 20 million deliveries and save 4,000 tons of Co2 emissions by 2022 while continuing to be an asset light business. The company partners with franchisee owners, NBFCs and OEMs through asset leasing models and is able to consistently offer 25%+ IRR to asset partners due to high asset utilization & lower O&M costs.

EBikeGo, started in 2019 is a shared EV based last mile logistics & micro-mobility platform that aggregates last mile delivery for all prominent companies in ecommerce, food delivery, groceries & urban mobility who outsource their last mile to the company. There is a significant untapped opportunity in the unorganized segment. A small local grocery store does 20-30 home deliveries a day, but their delivery operations are broken and expensive. On a mile-to-mile basis, we are 40% cheaper, more reliable and cleaner than their existing petrol bike deliveries and that is driving rapid adoption. The company has also partnered with local neighbourhood merchants, and kirana chains to transform their delivery operations with a tech based delivery platform powered by the EV advantage of clean mode of delivery with time and cost economics.

“Currently our e-bikes are doing about 275,000 deliveries and saving close to 30 tons of CO2 every month. With 10X growth expected in the next 12 months, and a 10,000-EV bike-fleet strong platform, we aim to make a significant impact on the environment and drive significant value to any business that is looking to scale up their delivery operations” said Dr. Irfan Khan, Co-founder and CEO of eBikeGo.

eBikeGo aims to reduce congestion in cities and 200,000 tons of CO2 emissions by replacing polluting petrol bikes with EVs. Besides reducing emissions, the company also helps in drastically cutting down delivery cost. EVs cost 30% lower than petrol bikes per delivery. By deploying technology and telematics each vehicle is converting into a shared resource, further deepening cost cuts and improving delivery KPIs for the clients. This also enables delivery companies to penetrate and grow in tier-2 and tier-3 markets which they could not do earlier.

As per a 2020 McKinsey Report, the Indian 2-wheeler market is going to see 25% EV penetration by 2030, the highest across all vehicle segments. This implies that that close to 1.5-2 crore EV 2-wheelers will be on the road in next 10 years’ time, approximately 30% of which will be contributed by delivery and micro mobility players.

“But this change won’t happen by itself. Someone has to develop an ecosystem – with charging infrastructure, battery swapping supply chain, service stations, etc. We have taken significant lead in creating an enabling ecosystem through super low cost & IOT enabled charging points & battery swapping infrastructure. We have also worked with our OEM partners on a variety of design innovations which allow our EVs to carry optimal loads without breaking the back of the rider, deliver temperature controlled, sanitized and untampered food, medicines & groceries, which customers are increasingly demanding nowadays” adds Dr. Khan.

The Company is already in talks with a few prominent clean energy & logistics-tech-focused funds to raise a larger round and grow at a rapid scale.

“This will be the next big disruption in logistics and urban mobility. The shift will be massive and we believe our early mover advantage, and the steps we are taking will help us establish clear market dominance” said Kedar Soman, CTO of eBikeGo.

The company is investing heavily into transportation data science that not only helps to run highly optimized delivery operations, but also “enhances asset life”, increases asset ROI and cuts downtime by 30-40%. Beyond India, EBikeGo is planning to expand to South Africa, Sri Lanka & a few other markets by partnering with local companies through a platform-as-a-service model. That is a good validation of the operating model & technology platform, and will help the company to expand rapidly and reduce carbon footprint at a global scale.