The first thing that gives anxious moments to tourists on reaching a new place is the high cost of local transport.
Public transport is normally unreliable and taxi providers resort to ‘surcharge’ during peak hours. Most tour operators rush the guests through the itinerary while tourists would like to go around in a leisurely manner at their own pace.
Brahmananda Reddy of Kadapa was working for a software company in Hyderabad. He came on a short vacation to Vizag and was peeved at the prohibitive cost of moving around in taxis to see the tourist places like Yarada, Rushikonda, Buddhist heritage sites around the city, the Borra Caves and Araku Valley. He, however, saw an opportunity in the problem and toyed with the idea of starting the ‘bike rental business.’
Jagoo, started by Mr. Reddy with just two bikes at Gangapur Layout (near the Government Circuit House) in January 2016, has acquired a fleet of 31 bikes in less than a year. These include: high-end ones like the 550cc, Rs.2.5 lakh worth, Royal Enfield Continental, Royal Enfield, Avenger 220cc, FZ 2.0, Pulsar and Apache.
All that the prospective riders should possess are a valid original driving licence and his/her ‘Aadhaar card’ and photograph.
“We are not only getting people from across India but also foreigners. Tim Hartman, a Swiss national, came on a holiday to the city. He initially hired a TVS Zest for 11 days but extended it to one month,” says Mr. Reddy. “A 15-member group of young men and women from Russia, who are here to work on the submarine project of the Indian Navy, come to us during weekends to hire our bikes. They book the bikes of their choice online or through WhatsApp and come to us with prior intimation, to take delivery of the bikes. In addition to their DL, we take their original passports before lending the bikes,” he says.
“We can monitor the speed of our bikes, whether the hirer is going out of the region/State, whether the bikes are used for racing and whether hirers are violating traffic rules, sitting in our office and watching the computer. We have advance GPS system with our technical knowledge,” says Mr. Reddy.
Mr. Brahmananda Reddy will soon be joined by his partner and former colleague Prabhakar Reddy of Hyderabad, and they plan to develop similar bike hire outlets on the franchisee model in Tirupati and Kakinada and subsequently in Vijayawada and Guntur.
