Ride-hailing platform Rapido drives into cab services lane
Rapido is now expanding into the cab market.
The company has been piloting cabs in Hyderabad for a few months now, and is at an “advanced test stage”, a spokesperson for Rapido told ETtech. “We’ve gotten a fantastic response so far and it has given us confidence about the model working out,” the spokesperson claimed, declining to comment on the expansion of cab services to other cities or the timeline.
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Offering CollegeCourseWebsiteNorthwestern UniversityKellogg Post Graduate Certificate in Product ManagementVisitIIM KozhikodeIIMK Advanced Data Science For ManagersVisitIIT DelhiIITD Certificate Programme in Data Science & Machine LearningVisitRapido is best known for being one of the first firms to introduce ride hailing services through two-wheelers, which it then expanded to three-wheelers. In the three-wheeler section, it competes with the likes of Uber, Ola and ONDC-backed Namma Yatri. In the two wheeler segment, it competes with Ola and Uber in a few cities.
‘Following linear logic’
“We followed the linear logic of going from two-wheelers to three-wheelers, and now to four wheelers… the idea is to stick to our aggregator personality and not change that nature by, say, owning vehicles,” the Rapido spokesperson added.
Rapido runs operations in over 100 cities, according to its website. The firm last raised $180 million at a valuation of $820 million in April 2022, with the likes of food major Swiggy, two-wheeler maker TVS Motor, and venture firms West Bridge Capital and Nexus Venture Partners investing.
Competition heating up
The Indian cab-hailing space has seen competition intensify over the past two years, with specialised service providers such as
