 "Ride-hailing service Rapido crosses $1 billion gross merchandise value mark")
Popular ride-hailing platform Rapido has crossed Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of $1 billion, driven by a bold expansion bid, The Economic Times reported on Friday.
This marks Rapido’s three-fold growth compared to FY23, when the Bengaluru-based company logged a GMV of almost $300 million.
Rapido, which originally started as a bike-taxi service, has grown to include cabs and auto-rickshaws in its offerings, and has also expanded its footprint to 100 new cities across India.
Rapido enters Unicorn club
In July-end, the company entered the Unicorn club after raising $120 million in funding from its largest existing investor WestBridge Capital. This took WestBridge Capital’s total stake in the firm to 25.6 per cent, according to data platform Tracxn.
In an earlier funding round in April 2022, Rapido had raised $180 million. This phase saw participation from quick commerce major Swiggy, TVS Motor Company among others. This round boosted Rapido’s valuation to $830 million.
The app-based ride aggregation platform was founded in 2015 by two IITians - Pavan Guntupalli and Aravind Sanka - along with Rishikesh SR, an alumni of the Bengaluru-based PES University.
Last month, the company hit a milestone of securing two million ride orders in a single day, Srivatsa Katta, head of engineering at Rapido, said on LinkedIn. The company has also experimented with Rapido Box - the on-demand delivery service, offering pick and drop options for food and medicines, etc.
According to its website, the platform has served over 10 million customers and completed more than 100 million rides to date. The company has boarded over 1 million partner drivers, or as it says ‘captains’, and has over 25 million downloads on its mobile application.
With this, the firm has emerged as the third largest player in the ride-hailing sector after Uber and Ola and commands more than half of the market share in the bike-taxi segment, according to some estimates.