Two-wheeler financing startup Bike Bazaar stated it has raised Rs 170 crore of fairness funding led by Girls’s World Banking Asset Administration (WAM) with participation from current buyers together with Elevar Fairness and Faering Capital.
Elevar was the early investor in Bike Bazaar and continues to carry the most important stake within the enterprise.
The corporate intends to make use of the funds to extend its enterprise in rural India and in addition scale its market enterprise for the sale and buy of used two-wheelers.
Based in 2017 by former Bajaj Auto government Srinivas Kantheti and former Bajaj Finance government Karunakaran Vadakkepat as a used two-wheeler financing enterprise, Bike Bazaar has now a number of companies throughout the two-wheeler section together with new two-wheeler financing, a market for pre-owned two-wheelers, and a brand new electrical automobile financing enterprise in addition to extra companies like leasing and insurance coverage. It’s going to add servicing as properly, officers stated.
The founders have spent a long time in automotive and its related financing area earlier than beginning up.
“Our technique is to be current throughout the entire lifecycle of the two-wheeler,” Vadakkepat stated. “For instance, somebody who’s trying to purchase a two-wheeler could wish to change his outdated two-wheeler. He can avail of each the financing companies and the resale service from us. We should always have the ability to promote that outdated automobile by our market, or completely different pre-owned gross sales channels. We wish to add value-added companies like RTO transfers, insurance coverage, and so on, and over time we wish to add companies additionally. Truly, we wish each enterprise to feed on the opposite enterprise in order that we will leverage prices.”
He stated the corporate is in talks to lift one other Rs 80 crore and can also be in superior levels of talks with a worldwide investor to lift a Rs 200-250 crore funding spherical particularly for its EV enterprise.
ET had reported on August 19 that mainstream enterprise capital buyers are turning to the EV startup area whilst funding has slowed down within the bigger startup ecosystem.
Vadakkepat stated the corporate remains to be determining the right way to construction the corporate to accommodate the funding particularly for the EV enterprise.
Bike Bazaar claims to have a major presence in smaller cities and operates in additional than 140 cities throughout India with over 1,000 touchpoints. Its financing enterprise has disbursed greater than 3,00,000 two-wheeler loans until date and as of July 2022 it had accomplished enterprise with a cumulative gross transaction worth of greater than Rs 1,500 crore. Since its inception, the corporate has raised a complete of Rs 400 crore in fairness funding.
Vadakkepat advised ET that the corporate’s buyer base consists of people who find themselves in professions like plumbing, carpentry, and family work, and these individuals lack the requisite monetary literacy to avail of credit score and different amenities. Bike Bazaar has arrange a number of money assortment factors to make sure reimbursement of the loans.
Bike Bazaar companions with a number of banks and NBFCs by which it points loans. The startup usually can have 20% publicity to those loans, Vadakkepat stated.
“Girls’s World Banking is devoted to girls’s financial empowerment and WAM is investing in Bike Bazaar’s demonstrated potential to offer accessible and inexpensive two-wheeler finance to financially underserved girls in India, concurrently enabling their mobility and growing their asset bases and credit score profiles,” stated Christina Juhasz, chief funding officer of Girls’s World Banking Asset Administration.
WAM is funded by the German authorities’s Federal Ministry of Financial Cooperation and Improvement and The European Union.