InMobi Cofounder Amit Gupta Quits To Launch IoT-driven Bicycle Sharing Startup

InMobi’s co-founder Amit Gupta is stepping down from his executive role within the company, in just after five months, to launch internet of things-driven bicycle sharing startup Yulu.

Backed by Softbank, InMobi was founded by Amit Gupta along with Naveen Tewari, Mohit Saxena and Abhay Singhal in 2007. While Mohit Saxena had already quit the company to start his own venture, Amit has become the second co-founder to quit InMobi and now the company is left with Naveen and Abhay, among four of its co-founders.

Amit Gupta, who is also President of OEM and telco solutions, will now become CEO of Yulu. He, however, will remain involved with InMobi as co-founder.

"I am not leaving InMobi. I have always had a desire to be aligned with a social cause. This idea has germinated into something that finally fulfils this need. Naveen and my fellow co-founders have been an integral part of seeing me through this process. I will continue as co-founder at InMobi minus the operational capabilities", said Amit Gupta in a statement.

Gupta's new venture Yulu will launch its bike-sharing service in Bangalore with a few hundred bicycles. Yulu is starting with regular, dockless bicycles that people can rent using their iOS or Android phone. The bikes unlock via QR codes and bill the rider for every 30 minutes of use.

Bike-sharing has become a new hotbed for founders and VCs, globally. In China, companies Ofo and Mobike have both achieved unicorn status for their respective bike-sharing startups. While Ofo had already showed its interest to launch its services in India, Zoomcar has too launched its bicycle-rental service PEDL, last month.

It is also notable that while Yulu is IoT-driven and launching its services first in the city of Bangalore. To recall, the city-- in July-- had announced that it is working on making IoT-enabled roads.

Curated Food Startup Twigly Raises $200K From Tracxn and Others

Curated food marketplace startup Twigly has raised seed funding of $200,000 from Tracxn Labs and a clutch of angel investors. The angel investors include Amit Gupta (co-founder, Inmobi), Aloke Bajpai (founder of Ixigo), founders of Delhivery, Ashish Kumar (founder of Staybees and Techriti), and partners and employees of SAIF Partners.

Twigly, inspired by US-based Sprig, was founded in August 2015 by Sonal Minhas, Rohan Dayal and Naresh Kumar Kachhi. Sonal is a former vice-president at venture capital firm SAIF Partners, where he closely worked on the food and beverage industry, decided to take the plunge and start Twigly—a kitchen-on-cloud business.

Twigly works on an online kitchen model: the food is made at a central kitchen and shipped to customers directly. The menu is limited and changes on a weekly basis.

the Gurgaon-based startup opened its consumer website and mobile app on 16 September and currently ships close to 40 orders a day with an average ticket size of Rs.500. The company's 600 sq. ft kitchen in Gurgaon's Sector 26 has the capacity to address 120-150 orders in a day.

Twigly has accumulated a base of over 500 customers in its one month of operations so far. In the next three months, Twigly will expand its presence to Delhi.

"Eating out is still a large space and Sonal has the experience of working with food companies closely. I see Twigly as the Internet-enabled Subway of India. Execution is something that will distinguish them from the others," said Tracxn co-founder Abhishek Goyal.