Two-wheeler financing startup Bike Bazaar mentioned it has raised Rs 170 crore of fairness funding led by Girls’s World Banking Asset Administration (WAM) with participation from current traders 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 likewise 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 inside 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 apart from further companies like leasing and insurance coverage. It’s going to add servicing as nicely, officers mentioned.
The founders have spent many years in automotive and its related financing house earlier than beginning up.
“Our technique is to be current throughout the entire lifecycle of the two-wheeler,” Vadakkepat mentioned. “For instance, somebody who’s trying to purchase a two-wheeler could wish to change his outdated two-wheeler.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 We should always have the ability to promote that outdated automobile by our market, or totally different pre-owned gross sales channels.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 mentioned the corporate is in talks to boost one other Rs 80 crore and can also be in superior levels of talks with a worldwide investor to boost a Rs 200-250 crore funding spherical particularly for its EV enterprise.
ET had reported on August 19 that mainstream enterprise capital traders are turning to the EV startup house at the same time as funding has slowed down within the bigger startup ecosystem.
Vadakkepat mentioned the corporate remains to be determining easy methods 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 completed 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 instructed ET that the corporate’s buyer base contains 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 services. 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 sometimes can have 20% publicity to those loans, Vadakkepat mentioned.
“Girls’s World Banking is devoted to ladies’s financial empowerment and WAM is investing in Bike Bazaar’s demonstrated potential to offer accessible and reasonably priced two-wheeler finance to financially underserved ladies in India, concurrently enabling their mobility and creating their asset bases and credit score profiles,” mentioned 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 Growth and The European Union.
