Startup

Bounce turns EBIT positive in September, to double down on B2B offerings: CEO

Published

7 hours ago

November 22, 2024

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EV maker Bounce Infinity has been no stranger to pivots. From starting out in 2014 as a premium bike rental company which offered two-wheelers across a range of brands from Harley Davidson to Ducati to later becoming a scooter rental service in 2016, the team has worn multiple caps.

In 2018, the company adopted a dockless bike-sharing model which allowed users to drop their vehicles after use within the city limits. However, it was severely hit by the pandemic, which halted urban mobility.

Finally in 2021, Bounce entered the EV ecosystem and has since managed to significantly narrow its net losses consecutively until FY23. The company is yet to file its FY24 results, but according to Vivekananda Hallekere, CEO and co-founder of Bounce, it turned EBIT positive in September for the first time and is on track to clock in Rs 100 crore in revenue in FY25.

In a conversation with YourStory, Hallekere details Bounce’s overseas ambitions and how it intends to double down on its business-to-business (B2B) offerings amidst a boom in the e-commerce and quick commerce space.

YS: India’s electric mobility space is seeing intense competition. How is Bounce Infinity hoping to stay ahead of the curve in this ecosystem?

Vivekananda: Our learnings from managing a fleet of 30,000 scooters in our ride-sharing business, covering over 200 million kilometres, gave us an in-depth understanding of what is required in electric two-wheelers. So we’ve built our scooters like a platform where we can keep moving up in terms of the battery tech and motor tech. We don’t have to redo the whole vehicle. We made certain design choices very early in our journey which makes us stay very agile and flexible.

We are probably the only Indian OEM today which has been able to integrate with battery swapping operators. So today for any delivery use case where gig workers don’t have space to park their vehicle and charge their scooter, they can use our scooters. That is one thing we have done.

Second is the battery swapping itself, where we have integrated with multiple battery swapping operators. So you can just come, start riding, you don’t have to worry about range, you don’t have to worry about where to charge, and you pay, it’s like a variable cost, and you don’t have to worry about battery life, warranty, etc. So these things have helped us focus on certain use cases, without having to burn a lot of money.

YS: How are you hoping to expand your business-to-consumer (B2C) services, going forward?

Vivekananda: There is intense competition in the B2C segment today. Everyone is losing at a bomb cost level, which means that you should have had a lot of money in the bank, as in you should have raised a lot of funds, or you can’t do this. So we have taken a different approach.

For the first two years, we focused on B2C, and we sold across India to dealers, etc. But once this marketing and burn intensified, we started focusing on use cases where people need high uptime, high reliability, and flexibility in terms of solution. So we have gone after those use cases. One of such use cases is the B2B use case that we are talking about. In the last two quarters, we worked closely with logistics companies and quick commerce companies.

We recognised challenges faced by gig workers, like lack of credit and charging infrastructure and the company developed a plug-and-play EV leasing solution for logistics firms.

By offering long-term leases that include vehicle maintenance, insurance, and energy costs at 30% lower than alternatives, they remove vehicle ownership hurdles. This enables logistics firms to scale rapidly by hiring workers without vehicles and promotes loyalty by offering lease-to-own options for gig workers.

We’ve solved the scooter part of the equation, where they sign up long-term leases. Now the logistics company can go find people who don’t have a scooter to work with them. So in the last quarter, we have added close to 3,000 scooters for them.

We have offered a seamless long-term lease solution, managing everything from vehicle recovery to ownership transfer. Gig workers can even own the vehicle in 26-48 months, which fosters loyalty and ease for delivery companies.

YS: All models of Bounce Infinity have a detachable battery to accommodate battery swapping. How do you think the battery swapping ecosystem in India is growing today?

Vivekananda: We have two large operators, BatterySmart and Sun. BatterySmart is built on e-rickshaw versus model. So, they’re primarily strong in markets where e-rickshaw is already out there running. But the difference between a battery swapping for e-rickshaw versus two-wheeler delivery is the uptime and reliability and other things. An e-rickshaw might be okay to have some downtime. An e-rickshaw is a low-speed vehicle while two-wheelers are high- speed vehicles.

Previously, we operated our swapping infrastructure during our ride-sharing days, but we now focus on private networks, offering solutions for clients like bike taxi companies. Today, the market is aware of what is battery swapping, what is the pricing of battery swapping that works for a gig worker. With growing awareness among gig workers and increasing demand, battery swapping is gaining traction.

Over the next 12-18 months, major players like Jio and Shell are expected to enter the space, which will boost investment in this capital-intensive sector, currently dominated by just two well-funded operators.

YS: What is the path forward for Bounce?

Vivekananda:: So we think the delivery ecosystem is going to be a good market. So we will come up with more products which make sense for different use cases. It can be a low speed one, it can be a mid speed one with battery or with battery swapping. We will also come up with some fixed batteries also for certain use cases. We are not married to one school of thought. I think each use case needs a particular solution. So we will come up with those solutions.

Then another key piece that we will try and do is how to make electric scooters a shareable asset in a way by helping companies own vehicles with ease and through transparent lending.

YS: What are your plans for the B2C segment?

Vivekananda: So we will let it organically grow for now. Because we have about 20,000 users who have bought our models and are very happy. Whatever we innovate, we will offer B2C as well. But we won’t go after discounting or aggressive pricing. We will try to be very logical about the

price point to the end user.

For example we have liquid cooled fast charge batteries for B2C use cases, which are portable and fast charging. We are now looking at LFP fast charging solutions and smaller batteries for B2C use cases where the utilisation is less.

We were the first to say that we don’t need a 4 kWh battery for B2C use

case. A 1.9 kWh battery with 60-70 kWh range is good enough. The whole industry actually followed that. So we will go further down in the energy that a user needs which will enable them to bring down the cost of a vehicle that way.

YS: Could you elaborate on your recent partnership with SUN Mobility to deploy 30,000 e-scooters?

Vivekananda: We partner with SUN to offer scooters integrated with their battery swapping solution. Logistics companies pay us for the vehicles and SUN for energy. This model eliminates the need for SUN to buy vehicles directly.

So far, we’ve deployed over 4,000 scooters on SUN’s network. I think we are now looking at it to be not too dependent on SUN to pick up these vehicles and are scaling independently, with a current deployment run rate of 1,500-2,000 scooters per month.

YS: How flexible is Bounce when it comes switching between battery swapping platforms depending on a customer’s preference?

Vivekananda: Today when we work with SUN Mobility, the scooters that are deployed under this partnership’s battery swapping infrastructure can work only with SUN Mobility’s batteries unless we change the connectors. But our scooters are adaptable and if requested, we can seamlessly transition the vehicle for other battery swapping operators like Battery Smart.

It’s like in a way the portability of telecom operators. You can’t for every call choose between Airtel versus Vodafone, but you make a conscious choice that I want to move from Airtel to Vodafone. So, we have built that flexibility on the scooter because of which we are able to remove the risk of being married to a battery swapping operator both from a buyer point of view and a company. So, we do deep integrations and we work with SUN.

YS: Could you help me understand when do you see the company becoming profitable?

Vivekananda: In September, we became EBIT positive, covering all costs, including interest, which is a milestone for an OEM. We have strong exports and a lean operation that focuses on the product. We aim to remain EBITDA positive and achieve net profitability within two quarters while doubling our turnover.

YS: How do you think the company’s top-line numbers will look like in FY25?

Vivekananda: This March, if we go at the current run rate, we should be at Rs 100 crores plus of annual revenue. If we get to double down, I think there is a high chance that we can get to an annualised revenue rate of Rs 150 to Rs 200 crore.

YS: What are Bounce’s plans in terms of overseas expansion?

Vivekananda: We were very bullish on Europe, but Europe has gone through its own ups and downs. All the quick commerce companies have not sustained there. But two years ago, we were thinking of Europe to be one of our major markets. Our scooters are European Union certified scooters. Because of this certification, we are able to sell it in a bunch of markets such as the Philippines, and Africa. We have been selling our vehicles in South Africa for almost a year now.

We sell our scooters at about $2,000-$2,300, which is attractive for both us and the buyer. Bounce competes with China’s NIU in this market. However, we perform better and are more economical and highly rugged because it (the scooter) was built for Indian roads.

In the Middle East, we have a high speed variant, which is a 90 kmph top speed variant, which we are making now. Now we are selling the current variants, but the Middle East has this need for high speed. Because of the highways and minimum speed requirement. So, we have a 90 kmph data product, which we are releasing for the Middle East market.

About 5-10% of our total revenue from operations are coming from exports, but at a very high margin as of now. So, we think we have still not invested on the marketing and distribution part of it for exports. But this year, we are going to double down on it. We are looking at more countries in the Middle East including Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

YS: Do you see Bounce being in the market to raise more funds any time soon?

Vivekananda: I think we will figure out the timing. Since we are now an EBIT-positive company, we are looking at a range of options including IPO markets and private credit and figuring out where we should deploy the funds. While we are not actively raising capital right now, we remain open to opportunities with the right investors.

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Startup

Stuck in your career? Watch out for these 7 red flags

Published

49 minutes ago

November 22, 2024

admin

A toxic work environment—marked by poor communication, favouritism, or lack of recognition—can drain your energy and stifle your potential.

What to do

Identify the signs early. If efforts to improve the culture fail, don’t hesitate to explore better opportunities elsewhere. Your mental and professional well-being matter.

Recognising these seven red flags is the first step toward reclaiming your professional growth. Awareness allows you to address these challenges proactively, fostering a career path that aligns with your goals and aspirations.

Take stock of where you stand today—are any of these red flags present in your career? By tackling them head-on, you’ll be better equipped to break free from stagnation and reach new heights of success.

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Startup

Trash to treasure: How ReCircle cracked India’s waste management code

Published

2 hours ago

November 22, 2024

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In 2016, NASA published an image of a fire raging across the largest landfill in Mumbai, underscoring India’s escalating waste management crisis and sparking public concern and action.

Situated near Thane Creek, the Deonar dumping ground stretches across 326 acres, receiving over 3,700 metric tons of trash daily—nearly one-third of the city’s waste back then.

Amidst this, two NGO founders–Rahul Nainani and Gurashish Singh Sahni–realised the issue of a large amount of waste ending up in landfills. In 2016, they founded ReCircle to address the same.

Today, ReCircle–a data and supply chain company–is working on digitising India’s waste supply chain and monetising the data that flows through this supply chain.

How did it begin?

In 2015, Nainani and Sahni first met at a Google startup weekend and decided to start an NGO model to connect households in Deonar to institutions for waste collection. However, the Deonar fire in the following year led the founders to pivot to develop a system that focuses on diverting waste away from landfills and oceans.

“One of the things we found was that the average life expectancy of people living around the dumpsite (Deonar) was about 38-37 years of age. These people don’t work in the dumpsite but live in the penitentiary of the dumpsite itself. And that was a wake-up call–it is happening in the heart of the city, in Mumbai,” Nainani, CEO of ReCircle, tells YourStory.

“If it is affecting the people living around the dumpsite, how soon will it start affecting the rest of us?”–the duo were plagued by the question.

ReCircle started its operations under a business-to-consumer (B2C) model, but after three years, in 2019, the company realised it needed to procure larger volumes of waste to create an impact in the ecosystem and pivoted to a B2B model. “That is when we saw most of our growth come in,” he adds.

According to the co-founder, the waste management sector did not exist when the company was established–either for investors or customers. Initially, ReCircle struggled to convince people of the need for recycling.

Another challenge was to get the right team, as the co-founders did not have a background in the waste management sector prior to starting the company.

“It’s kind of like a non-sexy business. You’re not going to a tech startup that is growing and building something along those lines. So, finding the right team, getting the right people, building around that, and ensuring VCs see a bigger potential around that (was a challenge),” Nainani notes.

Business model

ClimaOne, ReCircle’s proprietary software, offers a reverse supply chain for plastic waste by connecting waste aggregators and collectors to recyclers and processors.

The platform enables the company to track and trace material that flows across this supply chain, giving it access to data ranging from where the waste was collected to how much was procured and what value it holds.

ReCircle sells this data to its clients, including Unilever, Coca-Cola, and Nestle, in the form of credits to meet their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals set by government regulatory bodies under the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) service.

The Mumbai-based company works with 400 collection partners across 250+ locations in India. In March 2024, the company recovered over 169,000 tonnes of waste through its supply chain. To put this into context, the co-founder says 169,000 tonnes is equivalent to the weight of over 28,000 full-grown.

Additionally, it has partnered with local scrap dealers, adopting a similar model to cab aggregators, where the dealer earns a portion of the waste collected.

“We have collection partners that run their independent businesses, and we provide them with this platform to give an additional source of income and be part of our supply chain. We basically transact with them in terms of volumes that we need to collect from them,” Nainani explains.

The company offers another service to clients, called the Plastic Neutral Program, which targets micro and small enterprises exempted from EPR compliances and provides a voluntary credit mechanism to these companies.

In April, ReCircle started a new project, Project Extra Life, in Mumbai with Circular Apparel Innovation Factory to target textile waste, where it has a system to recover and collect old textile materials from households, offices, and fashion houses, among others.

The path forward

ReCircle aims to work towards ethical circularity and is recycling waste material by itself along with its partners to achieve the same.

Earlier in September, the startup raised an undisclosed investment in a bridge round co-led by Venture Catalysts, Mumbai Angels, and high-net-worth individuals (HNIs). At present, it is in discussions with investors to raise a Series A round.

“With their focus on working towards ethical circularity and plans to forward integrate into the plastic waste supply chain, the company will not only be able to provide high-quality, traceable recycled plastic content to companies using plastic packaging but also build a new revenue channel,” said Shalini Chhabra of 3i Partners.

3i Partners had invested in ReCircle’s pre-Series A funding round in 2023, along with Flipkart Ventures and Acumen Fund Inc.

“We are already collecting bottles for Coca-Cola, which we are sending for recycling. We intend to set up our own recycling plant with this fundraise, where we convert these recycled bottles into granules that can be used to make new bottles out of that ecosystem. So, our forward integration with the plastic supply chain is one we are looking at in terms of using our investment into setting up our own recycling unit,” Nainani says.

The company, which aims to begin its recycling unit by early next financial year, is also exploring export opportunities for plastic granules in the US, European, and Middle Eastern markets, where there is a bigger consumer awareness and demand for recycled material.

According to Mordor Intelligence, India’s waste management market size is estimated at $12.90 billion in 2024, expected to reach $13.30 billion by 2029, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 6.10% between 2024 and 2029.

Going forward, ReCircle aims to increase its revenue channel by selling recycled plastics to the same brand owners it currently collaborates with as a new source of revenue.

The company targets over $23 million in the next three years and has been cash flow positive since FY23.

ReCircle was part of YourStory’s Tech30 list, which looked at India’s 30 most promising startups poised to become major disruptors across fields.

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Startup

India’s love for short videos; Bounce on path to profitability

Published

3 hours ago

November 22, 2024

admin

Hello,

What do you call an ex-unicorn?

A recent transition towards a direct distribution model and a muted demand for Mamaearth has cost Honasa Consumer its unicorn status.

Honasa Consumer’s shares fell about 29% across sessions since its close last week, despite the company clarifying that its distribution value chain carried a total inventory of Rs 40.69 crore, against the quoted figure of Rs 300 crore of near-expiry inventory by the All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation,

At market close on Thursday, the company’s shares were trading at Rs 237.40 apiece, down 9.99%, tanking the company’s total market cap to Rs 7,721 crore (roughly $902 million) from its IPO valuation of Rs 10,500 crore.

It wasn’t a bright day for Gautam Adani, either.

Adani Group companies lost about $27 billion in market value after Adani and a few others were indicted on alleged bribery and fraud charges by US prosecutors to win solar power plant contracts, expected to yield $2 billion of profit over 20 years.

Adani Enterprises closed down 23% in its worst single-day drop since February 2023, although Adani Group denied the allegations as “baseless”. It added that it would seek “all possible legal recourse”.

But there was more bad news. Kenyan President William Ruto cancelled certain Adani contracts in the first major business fallout after the indictment.

ICYMI: All that happened in the Adani case.

Lastly, meet the new entrant to LinkedIn–Varun Dhawan!

The Bollywood actor took to the professional networking social media platform and said he wanted to connect with professionals beyond just the entertainment industry.

As they say, there’s no age to learn new things!

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about

India’s love for short video
Bounce on path to profitability
Driving diversity in entrepreneurship

Here’s your trivia for today: What Christmas single has the biggest sales of all time?

Internet

India’s love for short videos

Startup Bharat - Short form video — Image credit: Daisy

India’s short-form video market has grown 3.6 times in daily users since 2020, thanks to its reach in smaller cities and better content, according to Redseer Strategy Consultants.

Scroll:

Mukesh Kumar, Associate Partner at Redseer Strategy Consultants, believes India’s digital advertising market is projected to nearly double by FY29 to reach $16–17 billion, with video advertising leading the way as the fastest-growing ad format.
More than 50% of short-form video users are monetisable, the report noted. The discretionary spending of these users is often directed toward ecommerce, OTT, in-app purchases, and paid gaming services.
Currently, over 63% of the short-form video engagement is coming from Tier II+ regions, with platforms like Josh and Moj tailoring content for local languages and preferences.

Startup: Zopper

Amount: $25M

Round: Series D

Startup: CredFlow

Amount: $3.7M

Round: Pre-Series B

Startup: O4H

Amount: Rs 1 Cr

Round: Seed

Interview

Bounce CEO outlines path to profitability

After multiple pivots, Bounce entered the EV ecosystem in 2021 and has since managed to significantly narrow its net losses consecutively until FY23. The company is yet to file its FY24 results, but according to Vivekananda Hallekere, CEO and Co-founder of Bounce, it turned EBIT positive in September for the first time and is on track to clock in Rs 100 crore in revenue in FY25.

Growing business:

The company started its journey in 2014 as a premium bike rental company that offered two-wheelers across a range of brands from Harley Davidson to Ducati. It later became a scooter rental platform in 2016.
According to Hallekere, the company is the only Indian OEM today that has been able to integrate with battery-swapping operators.
While Bounce operates in the B2C segment, it also focuses on B2B use cases. “In the last two quarters, we worked closely with logistics companies and quick commerce companies,” Hallekere added.

Women entrepreneur

Driving diversity in entrepreneurship

Avneet Kohli is the co-founder of Encubay, a global startup and angel platform that aims to drive diversity in entrepreneurship and investing.

Over the past four years, Kohli and Co-founder Deeksha Ahuja conceptualised six IPs or properties. The most popular is the Power Circle—a safe space for women to share ideas, network, and meet peers in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, and Dubai.

Connecting:

As part of Encubay Global Immersion Week, it also hosts SoarUp, a pitch competition for startups to showcase what they are building to potential investors.
Other initiatives include Fempreneurs—a scaling-up and business acceleration programme led by industry experts; FounderFounder—where women ace their pitch and build relationships with investors over casual cocktails, canapes, and conversations, and Women in Emerging Tech, which helps women upskill.
In the future, Encubay wants to strengthen its presence in the UAE market, in terms of engagement and investors, including scaling and building structure systems.

News & updates

Chrome: The US Justice Department argued that Google should divest its Chrome browser as part of a remedy to break up the company’s illegal monopoly in online search. If the DOJ’s proposed remedy is approved, Google would not be allowed to re-enter the search market for five years.
Unsubscribe: WhatsApp is testing new ways for users to provide feedback to WhatsApp Businesses about what kind of messages they would want to receive—or not receive. This involves buttons like “interested/not interested” and “stop/resume” for some specific categories of messages.
AI: Nvidia said its latest generation of chips, known as Blackwell, launched earlier this year, is in “great shape”, as the world’s most valuable company reported another strong quarter of revenue growth, thanks to high demand for the infrastructure that has underpinned the artificial intelligence boom.

What Christmas single has the biggest sales of all time?

Answer: White Christmas by Bing Crosby, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide.

We would love to hear from you! To let us know what you liked and disliked about our newsletter, please mail [email protected].

If you don’t already get this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here. For past editions of the YourStory Buzz, you can check our Daily Capsule page here.

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