Rapido casestudy
Arvind Sanka who has studied from IIT Bhubaneswar worked almost 3 years in Flipkart logistic department and one fine day he decided to start his own startup- the karrier. The karrier used to pick your things in small trucks and then transfer them from one place to your destination. If you want to transfer your items then you needed to go to The Karrier app and book your truck, load your items into it and they will transfer to your destination.
Anyone who needs to expand their business it is well understood that funds will be needed, so Arvind pitched 75+ investors and unfortunately they all denied. Arvind used to live in Bangalore, who live in Bangalore have a pretty good idea about the amount of traffic there. He thought whether people will take their own cars or book cab either of the way traffic would be same and it would take a lot of time to clear off.
How Rapido started?
Arvind shared this thought with his friends – Pavan and Rishikesh, suddenly the idea of bike ride service clicked and that’s when Rapido took its shape. Rapido provides 5 lakh+ ride services daily, in the past 2 years, it grew more than 10x. You might be wondering, How can Rapido (which nobody knew about) become so gigantic that it overpowered OLA and Uber?
When Arvind left his job in 2015 and he was about to close his startup The Karrier, he was very frustrated due to this, and at the top that traffic annoyed him. He went back home and discussed this with Pavan and Rishikesh, his friends suggested if you are so much miffed with traffic then why don’t you use a bike? In Bangalore almost all areas have traffic and bike is more convenient because we can dodge from anywhere.
These 3 people came together to study the consumer behavior in Bangalore. They found majority of the people in Bangalore falls under two category- 1. People who are super rich and they have no problems, 2. People who saves money at every point. They observed people who fall under the second category have 2 basic problems which annoys them the most, their pockets with less or no money and when they are late at work and the main reason behind this was traffic jams.
Initial stage of Rapido
Then they started Rapido and within one month they got 10,000+ downloads. People started liking this facility but then nothing is possible without the challenges. After the launch of Rapido, 3 months later OLA and Uber also came into bike ride services. OLA and Uber had tremendous amount of funds that even if they charge no money from its customers for one year, it won’t affect them much.
Time by Time Rapido’s fund was decreasing, to keep the company running Arvind pitched investors once again. Every investors asked them how will you sustain in the competition while you have OLA and Uber as your rival?
In 2016, the situation became very critical for Rapido, it was on the verge of closing unless Pavan Munjal came into the frame. He is the CEO of Hero motor corporation, he provided them money from his own funds. Not only he gave them funds but also an excellent idea, OLA and Uber were magnificently have the power in big cities and they were unstoppable whereas they never focused on small cities, why? because people didn’t want to spend on these services.
Rapido’s strategy
From this point Rapido made their robust strategy Local ecosystem, in tier 2 and tier 3 cities people usually use auto or bus to travel because this was more convenient and affordable for them. But then there was one obvious problem – population density. As people used buses and autos to travel in tier 2 and tier3 cities, autos and buses were full packed, here Rapido found its way and noticed 1 opportunity for 2 types of people.
First one for those who traveled everyday and other who used their bikes but they don’t have any other way to earn some extra penny. By making their mechanism easier, Rapido started growing in tier2 and tier3 cities which automatically kept its market share growing. Rapido made their chain so strong that if someone books for OLA or Uber, in the mean time Rapido would stand at their door.
Many of you would be wondering, bikes aren’t safe then why should we opt for bike ride services? That’s when Rapido’s second strategy comes- RMS Rider monitoring system. In this system, every ride of Rapido is to be tracked down, if they have all the necessary documents or not, are they behaving well with the customers, whether the speed of their vehicle is in limit or not, if the rider is riding the bike at high speed then alert would be sent to them.
The rider who has high number of rides then he would be rewarded with bonus, so that rider would be always available and willing to give their best services to its customers. Now, one questions arises, OLA and Uber were doing same things as Rapido did but then also why they were not able to beat Rapido? The reason is concentrated feedback loop. OLA and Uber can be found in each and every city but Rapido was in few cities, its focus is not to cover every city but they more emphasised on providing its best services.
How did Rapido sustain?
However, OLA and Uber services were more advanced than Rapido, so how it was still one step ahead of both of them?
But why this happen? The reason is robust systems, Rapido rewards their drivers for more number of rides and good rating and in return they behave nicely with their customers, they don’t even overspeed because they know everything is being tracked with RMS.
Rapido built withdrawal system for their riders, Rapido riders are mostly whose who want to earn some extra money and it is really crucial for them. Through withdrawal system Rapido riders can actual withdraw their income on daily or weekly basis.
Moreover, Rapido has let women also to provide ride services so that they can provide extra comfort to females. It has already entered rental and delivery services, where they have tied up with Swiggy and Zomato. Rapido has found its way to defeat its competition, with these small initiatives, Rapido is providing far more better services and at the same time it is growing immensely.
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1) I am a rapido driver I want uber to be destroyed because they take he’ll lot of money from the driver as well as from the customer and also inform the driver if you cannot pay money in the arrears option you will not get cash trip. How stupid it might be and they fight with driver. They do not have proper customer support where a driver and also a customer get benefitted from it.
Yes uber support is very bad! That why we are seeing that uber is slightly getting offgrounded, because of ola and rapido and now they have dunzo as an competitor. They are standing only because they charge less than ola . But in future we will see ola dominanting in cab services and in bike there will be rapido , dunzo if they continued charging less than both and ofcourse ola.
Thanku for your valuable feedback, I hope you liked your post.