Scooter Rental Firm VOGO Raises Fresh $3.46 Mn in Venture Debt Funding from Alteria Capital

Already backed by Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal and cab aggregator Ola (ANI Technologies Pvt. Ltd), dockless scooter rental startup VOGO Rentals has raised a fresh funding of ₹25 (~ US$3.46 Mn) in venture debt funding from Alteria Capital, which VOGO will use exclusively for scaling up iits fleet of two wheelers.

For Mumbai-based Alteria, which has a maiden debt fund with a corpus of ₹800 crore, this is second fund infusion into Vogo, as in last October, the Venture debt firm had invested ₹8 crore into Vogo, as part of Vogo’s $7 Mn Series A round led by Ola, Stellaris Venture Partners and Matrix Partners.

With this, VOGO has raised a total of about US$120 Mn in funding over six rounds.

Since April last year, VOGO has scaled from around the then 5,000 vehicles to currenr fleet of 12,000 vehicles across 5 cities including Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

Talking about the recent investment, Vinod Murali, managing partner at Alteria Capital, said, "We have seen the rapid growth in this segment over the last 9-12 months and Vogo has consistently surpassed expectations on operating performance and driving demand. While there are many more execution aspects to tackle as they scale, we feel this team is well placed to emerge as a strong player in the urban mobility category."

Started in 2017, the Alteria fund has already secured commitments from anchor investors such as IndusInd Bank and Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI).

In March, Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal had invested an undisclosed amount in VOGO. Prior to that in December last year, Vogo raised $100 million from Ola, which would allow the later to add fleet of two-wheelers to the Ola app to enable its users to rent the two-wheeled devices.

Sachin Bansal Reportedly Invests in Scooter Rental Startup Vogo

Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal has invested an undisclosed amount in the Bengaluru-based scooter rental startup Vogo, which is also backed by cab-hailing firm Ola, which in turn is also an investee company of Bansal.

Bansal has invested in Vogo as a debt investment through his treasury department which is managing some of his money and investing in a bunch of startups, reported Business Standard citing a person familiar with the matter.

Last December, Vogo raised $100 million from Ola, which would allow the later to add fleet of two-wheelers to the Ola app to enable its users to rent the two-wheeled devices. So far, Vogo has raised a total of $117 million in funding over five rounds leaving out this reported funding, which is yet to confirmed by Sachin Bansal or Vogo.

Vogo is counts many high profile investors including Matrix Partner, Kalaari Capital, Stellaris Venture Partners and Pawan Munjal, Chairman & CEO of Hero MotoCorp, among others.

Currently available at limited pick up and drop off points across Bangalore, Hyderabad, Manipal and Mysore, Vogo lets its customers to rent out scooters for short one way trips. Each scooter has a VOGO box attached that lets customers access the key without any human intervention and start riding. It has a fleet of over 4,000 scooters as of now.

Vogo ( Vehicle On the GO) was founded in 2016 by Anand Ayyadurai, an alumnus of Vishwakarma Institute of Technology in Pune and IIM-Ahmedabad, along with Padmanabhan Balakrishnan and Sanchit Mittal.

In September last year, self-drive rental platform Drivezy joined hands with Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India Pvt. Ltd. to receive 3,000 scooters on the former's platform in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Bangalore-based Drivezy is reportedly looking at raising about $100 million in equity funding from Softbank and Amazon.

Ola Invests $100 Mn in Scooter Rental Startup Vogo

Cab hailing firm Ola will invest $100 million in Vogo, a scooter rental startup based out of Bangalore, which will allow it to add Vogo fleet of two-wheelers to the Ola app to enable its users to rent the two-wheeled devices.

Vogo, which provides services in the southern Indian cities of Bengaluru and Hyderabad, will use the money to expand its fleet by 100,000 scooters. It did not disclose how many scooters it currently has but said that more than 100,000 users have commuted for over 20 million kilometres using its two-wheelers.

“Our investment in Vogo will help build a smart multi-modal network for first-last mile connectivity in the country,” Ola co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Bhavish Aggarwal said in a media statement.

Notably, Ola was already an investor in Vogo prior to this investment as in August this year Vogo had raised an undisclosed Series A round from Ola, Matrix Partners and other investors, and now in this follow-on deal, Ola is doubling down its investment in Vogo.

Founded in 2016, by IIT-Bombay & IIM-Ahmedabad almni -- Anand Ayyadurai, B Padmanabhan and Sanchit Mittal, Vogo is a dockless scooter rental firm which lets customers rent scooters for short one way trips. The scooters have 'VOGO box' attached, which lets customers access the key without any human intervention and start riding.

Prior to Ola's investment, Vogo had raised a total of about $8 million in three rounds of funding from investors including Alteria Capital, Stellaris Venture Partners, Matrix India and individual investors like Pawan Munjal of HeroMotoCorp, Muthu Murugappan, Ajit Thomas and Vishesh Rajaram.

To recall, in May this year, Ola Co-founders, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, had together invested ₹45 lakh in Tork Motorcycles, a Pune-based electric vehicle (EV) making startup . Bhavish had invested nearly Rs 30 lakh while Bhati contributed about Rs 15 lakh, in lieu of shares.

Ola's investment in Tork was seen as an extension of the company's ambitious plans of putting a fleet of 10,000 EVs over the next 12 months and one million electric vehicles on its platform by 2021.

Tech-enabled Scooter Sharing Platform VOGO Raises Seed Funding

Bangalore-Based Vogo Automotive Pvt Ltd, which operates a tech-enabled scooter sharing platform, VOGO has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by the family members of the Murugappa, A.V. Thomas groups & Thiagaraja Groups. The funding round has also seen participation from Ajit Thomas, Chairman of A.V.Thomas group, Hari Thiagarajan, ED, Thiagaraja Mills, Muthu Murugappan, Business Head Nutraceuticals - EID Parry,Sriram Viji from Brakes India, Vishesh Rajaram from the VC fund, Speciale Invest, Karan Chandhok - Indian formula 1 driver and other HNIs. The funds will be used for building out the automated technology platform, innovation, building out the technology team and growing marketing efforts.

The company also announced the launch of India’s first automated pickup and drop scooter rental platform, and these scooters are called SPARK. Once customer books, he uses an OTP to get the key and start the scooter. Every smart VOGO scooter has been engineered by the VOGO team with a complex array of sensors which transmit millions of data points. VOGO can remotely track, monitor and control every Spark in real time and have made a mechanical scooter a connected intelligent IoT device. This ranges from vehicle health measurement via fuel and battery sensors, GPS for tracking, dicky and handlebar sensors and much more. This lets VOGO rebalance supply and demand, offer dynamic pricing and do intelligent bike allocation.

This now allows VOGO to offer 24/7 service & one-way travel at 50% of the price of autos and taxis. VOGO plans to scale this automated system across hundreds of pickup and drop locations in each city and raise a large institutional round in the coming months to build a large pan-India network.

According to Anand Ayyadurai, CEO, VOGO, "We started out by identifying an early adopter segment, college students & solving their commute problems. Now more than 15000 students across 15 colleges and four cities use VOGO: we see them substituting taxis and autos with us. We believe that what happened with China with cycle sharing will happen with India with scooter sharing. In 2017, we focused on building the automated IoT system to scale the business and now have end-to-end engineering capability across embedded systems, software development, and automotive space."

Launched in 2016 by Anand Ayyadurai, Padmanabhan Balakrishnan & Sanchit Mittal, VOGO is building a scooter sharing network that would enable urban commuters to rent scooters for short-haul and offer a quick and cost-effective alternative to cabs and autos. They are present in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Manipal & Mysore. The founders are from IIT-Bombay & IIM-Ahmedabad & have extensive experience across Flipkart, Amazon and Lazada. They get over 5000 orders a month and see a significant percentage coming from short trips and on weekdays.

According to Vishesh Rajaram, Speciale Invest, "Short-haul and last mile commute are large components of urban commute and sized in billions of dollars. Current options for cars, auto are expensive, and buses are inconvenient. Vogo is disrupting this segment by offering a more efficient, automated and cost-effective option of scooter sharing and renting. They operate an asset light model and have a differentiated product road-map that puts them ahead of the pack."