Gig economy. Bengaluru-based start-up Bounce targets $1 billion turnover in the next two years

Bengaluru-based start-up Bounce, which started as a bike renting company in 2018, is now fully getting into electric scooter manufacturing and also retro-fitting of battery in the existing petrol scooter, thereby looking at a turnover of $1 billion in the next two years.

“The initial target for us is to go out and deliver one-lakh scooters as soon as possible. After that the target is to deliver a million scooters... at 10,000 scooters itself it will be at $100 million run rate and at one-lakh scooters it will be close to $1 billion. Probably in next two years, we should be able to achieve that,” Vivekananda Hallekere, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Bounce told BusinessLine .

The company has a turnover of around $50 million right now. Considering electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure in India is at a very nascent stage, he took the challenges head-on, and an in-house EV mobility solution was built and launched in Bengaluru, Hallekere said.

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Over a period of six-months since launch, Bounce EV was able to clock eight-million kilometres and this was achieved with a distributed network on battery stations across 100+ locations, clocking two-lakh battery swaps.

Looking of options with respect to reliable, sustainable EV bike models, Bounce built its own EV and launched it in April this year. The company also acquired 22 Motors, an EV maker, to meet its target.

Plans ahead

“We will be launching two more electric scooters in mid-November and we will start deliveries from January. We have a capacity to make 1.20 lakh scooters a year…one of the USPs we have is that we sell the scooters without a battery and for battery, customers can pay for swap and get access to the battery,” he said

He said the electric scooters without the batteries will cost between ₹36,000 and ₹45,000 and have a top-speed of 65 kmph. The company has a manufacturing plant in Bhiwadi (Rajasthan) and said anybody can become a part of the battery swapping network by buying at least two batteries and put them into service even at a kinara shop.

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“We have quite a number of orders from business-to-business (B2B) side in retail sector and already have bookings for 10,000 EVs from a company in Turkey. We have some companies from Europe and Latin America as well, asking for our scooters and battery swapping infrastructure,” Hallekere said.

For retrofitting of the batteries in the existing petrol scooters, he said that there is a huge opportunity in that segment as there are 200 million two-wheelers running with internal combustion engine on the Indian roads today.

“Customers do zero investment, that’s the value proposition we are giving (for the retrofit). We will just charge ₹900 a month for 36 months, so there is no upfront cost... otherwise the kit costs around ₹20,000, and battery, which we give as a service,” he added.

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