Slowly, but surely, yellow scooters with red stripes are slipping through the traffic on Indian roads again. After gathering dust, flat tires, and dead batteries through the initial months of the lockdown, mobility startup Bounce’s now-sanitised dockless two-wheelers are back—to 40% of the ridership it had in Bengaluru before the pandemic, claims co-founder Vivekananda Hallekere. Rival Rapido’s bike-taxi business is at 50-60% of its pre-Covid level, The Ken has learnt.
Mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) companies like Bounce and Rapido were among the worst-affected when Covid-19 made landfall last year.
They spent the first few months of the lockdown cutting costs and figuring out alternative revenue sources.
