On-boards 100+ drivers and electric two-wheelers from Zypp as part of its fleet
Rapido, India’s largest bike taxi platform has announced joining hands with Zypp Electric to provide EV bike taxi ride service – Rapido EV – to its customers. With an aim to reduce its carbon footprint and encourage the use of environment-friendly vehicles, Rapido will be onboarding 100 + riders and electric two-wheelers from Zypp as part of its Captain fleet.
The service will be a pilot run for three months starting from March 2021 and will be tested for its demand and veracity in the Delhi-NCR area. Rapido is looking to on-board more such EV partners to further expand this business model across its Tier I market in the country.
Announcing the launch of Rapido EV, Mr. Aravind Sanka, Co-Founder, Rapido, said, “While India is the largest two-wheeler market, only 1% of it is electric. With the launch of Rapido EV rides, we want to give a unique experience to our users along with contributing positively to the environment and reduce our carbon footprint. The recent World Air Quality report by Swiss technology company IQAir ranked Delhi as the world’s most polluted Capital among 106 countries and we hope that this move helps contribute to the betterment of the air quality in the city.”
On the partnership with Rapido, Akash Gupta, Co-Founder, Zypp Electric, said, “We at Zypp are becoming the de-facto EV layer when it comes to goods and people movement. The partnership with Rapido is part of highly focused EV utilization project where we wish to ensure that every segment is able to switch to EVs comfortably. With our robust battery swapping network which will be tested with bike taxi services with Rapido, we’re here to bolster the EV proposition together with this partnership and would love to scale this nationally making people get pollution free taxi rides too.”
Rapido EV Rides will be available under the Ride section on the app and will be priced at the Rapido Ride rate with a minimal convenience fee. Customers have to download the app, log in to their account and book a Rapido Ride, through their iOS/Android phones.
Last year, Rapido announced several initiatives towards maintaining safety and following guidelines to protect the customer and the Captain, including the innovative Safety back shields for bike taxi rides. The captains are expected to sanitize and clean the vehicle and all customer accessible areas, post every ride, along with mandatory usage of masks during the entire ride by the Captains and the passengers. The company also introduced new policy support last year, where the company provides free cancellation if Captains or customers are without a mask.
