Wrong Side Driving?

Most two-wheeler rental start-ups have been thinking that the opportunity lies in high margin intercity commute by renting out premium bikes, largely over weekends. But some are discovering that, deep down, their existence lies on the other side.

- Sandeep Soni

Y Combinator-backed start-up Wheelstreet that rent out scooties, commuter and premium bikes had a realization two years back: the market was evolving from daily commuting to a week-or-two of adventure travel. From around 1,100 monthly bookings, Pranay Shrivastava, Co-founder of Wheelstreet, was aggressively aiming to hit around 6,000-booking mark by end of 2015. It raised $120,000 from Y Combinator in last round in September 2017. But the biggest flaw in the premium bike rental for intercity rides was low repeat usage rate. “The order value was very high, typically around Rs 4,000 but usually the customers used to book it only once in a quarter,” says Shrivastava in hindsight. The scalability issue was apparent.

Vivekananda Hallekere and Varun Agni from Wicked Ride also got their vision wrong while starting their superbikes rental service in September 2014. “We thought we can scale it up. This was largely out of our passion for big bikes and the high margin involved in renting them out,” says Hallekere. The logical solution, however, one could think of was switching to renting commuter bikes for daily commuting. This would have solved the problem of low repeat usage rate despite of low order value, for instance around Rs 100 for few hours a day, but a steady scalability was in sight. So Wicked Ride added commuter bike rental vertical - Metro Bikes in June 2015. Wheelstreet switched a bit later - during Y Combinator’s 2017 summer program.

POINTLESS ROUTE