Bajaj invests in an electric scooter rental start-up

Yulu, the bicycle and electric scooter rental start-up company has raised $8 million in a funding round led by Bajaj Auto. The start-up was in talks to raise a fresh round from Bajaj for the past five months.

According to the deal, Bajaj will manufacture customized electric scooters for Yulu and will offer vehicle finance via its financial services company – Bajaj Finserv. Yulu will leverage Bajaj as an OEM to build hardware for charging and make it anti-theft and IoT-enabled.

Yulu currently has 15,000 electric scooters across Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, and some limited areas of Bhubaneshwar and Delhi. With the fresh round of investment, Yulu plans to increase its fleet size to 100,000 electric two-wheelers by December 2020.

Backed by the likes of Blume Ventures, Binny Bansal, Naveen Tewari, and Girish Mathrubootham, Yulu solves micro-mobility challenges in the cities they are in now. Yulu offers two ride vehicles: a lithium powered scooter, Yulu Miracle that can go up to 25 km top speed and a smart bike – Yulu Move.

Yulu had also tied up with Uber in May to allow users to book a cab through the latter's mobile app. According to sources, Uber may also invest in Yulu.

The company was founded by Amit Gupta, RK Misra, Naveen Dachuri and Hemant Gupta and has been working with corporates and metro authorities to help them in last mile public transport services.