Baaz Bikes Founders (L-R): Subham, Anubhav, Abhijeet, Sahil, Karan
Baaz bikes has built an indigenous, end-to-end EV mobility (bike, energy & software) platform that fuels the gig economy and multiplies the earning potential of a gig worker while empowering the workforce socially and economically. The delivery segment will be the largest contributor to the growth of the gig economy, and will be critical in expanding Quick commerce, projected to be a $5.5 billion market opportunity by 2025 (gig economy will contribute $105B to India’s GDP by 2030).
Rapid, scalable, economical, environment friendly and indigenous mobility solutions will be crucial for the successful growth of e-commerce, retail & D2C.
Image Source: Baaz Bikes; Data Source: Unlocking Potential of Indian Gig Economy, BCG
Over the last few years, quick-commerce has driven growth in India’s e-commerce, retail and D2C segments. Quick-commerce is expected to grow 15x by 2025, representing a $5.5 billion market and addressing over 20 million households in India. It is thus imperative for quick-commerce players to build asset light, scalable models for better unit economics in distribution and delivery.
India’s gig-workforce plays a critical role here. They drive demand as the bridge between network and executional capability for last mile delivery. Zomato, for instance, in Dec 2020 said it was onboarding 5,000 delivery executives to its platform every week. On average, delivery executives manage to earn between INR 15,000 – INR 25,000 per month. Since most of them are the sole income providers in their families, the price of purchasing, maintaining and operating a vehicle has a significant impact on their disposable income. High total costs of ownership have become a major restraining factor, significantly impacting net earnings. In fact in many cases, people are unable to even participate in gig roles as they are unable to afford the high upfront costs of vehicles.
Here, we see an urgent need for a mobility solution that is cost-effective in terms of access and operational ease, such that they can help multiply the earning potential of gig workers. In addition, this solution should be able to provide comfortable ergonomics over long distances and durations (delivery executives cover 80km-100km every day on average) while also ensuring maximum uptime and performance in different conditions (temperature, terrain, climate). Different climatic conditions, terrains and driving conditions across regions can give birth to a robust solution that will then be able to improve gig economics globally. India with its complex ecosystem, demographics and consumerism thus has the potential to re-define the global framework of gig work.
Source: Baaz Bikes
Baaz’s design, software, hardware, distribution and economic model places it in a unique position to create a global solution, with the Indian market as its first use-case.
Baaz has built an indigenous, end-to-end, in-house designed EV platform (vehicle to energy to software) specifically for the Indian gig worker.
Baaz has adopted an asset-light and scalable business model. The company sells its bikes to a growing network of vehicle rental partners, who use the Baaz platform to further rent these bikes to the gig workforce and earn a steady cashflow through rent & battery swap commissions.
The complete in-house design provides Baaz with the agility to add or adjust features to vehicles based on terrain, use-cases, temperature and climatic conditions. It also allows them to ensure high uptimes and increased performance, while optimising ergonomics of design to maximise comfort and driving experience. Completely automated battery-swap stations along with the robust software platform provide a hassle-free user experience for gig workers & rental partners to seamlessly interact while minimising operational overheads.
A combination of customer-centric design and agile product development cycles allows Baaz to ensure higher retention, drive adoption and utilisation of their platform. This along with its asset light business model will drive increasing margins and unit economics for all stakeholders as Baaz scales its presence and deployment.
Baaz bikes aims to have total coverage of Delhi by mid-2022 which represents a market comprising over 40,000 delivery executives before expanding to major cities across the country.
Source: Baaz Bikes , Data Source: Kalaari Capital
The founders of Baaz bikes – Anubhav Sharma, Shubham Srivasatava, Sahil Malik, Abhijeet Saxena and Karan Singla, have worked together since they were students in IIT-D to develop and understand electric vehicles. They have created 3 generations of the Baaz Bikes. The founders spent valuable time understanding the ground realities, needs and challenges faced by all demand and supply side stakeholders throughout the user journey. This has allowed them to develop an end-to-end mobility platform which combines 1) vehicle engineering, 2) swapping stations and 3) multi-software layers for access, network discovery & customer experience. The founders’ passion to create a company that unlocks the scale potential of the gig economy while creating a business that drives higher profitability and returns for all stakeholders makes us believe that Baaz will define hyper local mobility standards globally.
Ravinder Pal Singh (Ravi) and Pranav Koshal form the deal team for Baaz at Kalaari Capital. Baaz combines applied engineering and applied science to create economies of scale. Companies who will disrupt and be trend setters in the gig economy will have to design and develop platforms that successfully converge hardware and software to enable the integration of different components that are critical to providing a seamless experience to the consumers.
From Anubhav Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Baaz – “Partnering with Kalaari has been a great experience. When we met Ravi for the first time, we knew we wanted to get him on board. The sheer excitement for Tech and experience in the domain, he and his team (Pranav and Avinash) bring on the table is really compelling. Not only the capital, but also their learnings in the Mobility Segment are definitely going to help us build a great Company from here.”
The embedded video has been sourced from Baaz Bikes, with no objection to distribution.
Kalaari Capital is an early-stage, technology-focused venture capital firm based out of Bengaluru, India. Since 2006, Kalaari has empowered visionary entrepreneurs building unique solutions that reshape the way Indians live, work, consume and transact. The firm’s ethos is to partner early with founders and work with them to navigate the inevitable challenges of fostering ideas into successful businesses. At its core, Kalaari believes in building long-term relationships based on trust, transparency, authenticity, and respect.
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