Rapido partners with Zypp to offer electric bike taxi rides

Mobility startup Rapido on Wednesday announced its partnership with Zypp Electric to offer electric bike taxi services to its customers. 

The service, dubbed Rapido EV, is on a pilot run for three months from March 2021 in the Delhi-NCR area, a statement said.  

The Bengaluru-based startup, which has currently deployed about 100 drivers and electric bikes, aims to expand the business model across tier 1 markets in the country. 

The Rapido electric vehicle (EV) rides will be available under the 'ride’ tab on the app. 

“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,” Aravind Sanka, co-founder of Rapido, said in a statement.  

“The recent World Air Quality report by Swiss technology company IQAir ranked Delhi as the world’s most polluted capital among 106 countries. We hope that this move helps contribute to the betterment of the air quality in the city,” he said. 

Akash Gupta, co-founder of 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 utilisation project where we wish to ensure that every segment is able to switch to EVs comfortably.” 

Rapido has been on an expansion spree. It launched its bike taxi operations in Mumbai in October 2020, and rolled out its auto rickshaw services across 11 additional cities in December.