WheelStreet, a startup based in India, has come up with an innovative concept, making Indian streets without docks for motorbikes. The project named WheelStreet Go is already running in the form of service for more than a month in Bangalore.
It will allow users to rent a scooter for a short period of time. You can pick and leave the scooter anywhere. The renting process includes the user entering a generated passcode in the app after scanning a QR code on the bike. This will unlock the vehicle, and a dedicated team supervises overspreading and parking the bikes.
WheelStreet collaborates with bike rental shops to use the bikes for its service, meaning that the offered range varies. The revenue is shared, and the vehicles are provided with WheelStreet branding and locks. The startup may own a fleet of its own in the future.
The Go service in Bangalore have this far used 50 scooters that are of 100cc. The price range starts at less than $1 for two hours, and there is basically no time limit. The early tests have been quite successful with about 28 customers on an average daily booking twice to thrice a day.
Their target is to reach 100 bikes this month and grow the business slowly. There had been hardly any marketing or promotion till now, and they haven’t yet experienced vandalism issues. The startup provides a GPS chip on the bike that disables the engine until the lock is opened.
We want to experiment and get feedback in Bangalore first, we’ll just stay here for next six months, then we’ll replicate the Go model in other cities. For now, we’re looking at the metro cities, where the area is wide and people travel four or five kilometers to their office or home. – Moksha Srivastava, Co-Founder and CMO, WheelStreet
They are aiming to reach 25,000 Go scooters by 2018 end, and presently working on raising about $2 million. The core business is pretty much on the top for now, and there is no requirement of fund. But to remain on top of the competition, they are carrying out initial conversations with investors for the raise. VCs of China and some others from India are the approached investors so far, as said by Moksha.
