Vogo, a scooter sharing start-up, said it had formed a strategic partnership with ride-hailing company Ola. Ola will boost Vogo’s supply by investing in 1,00,000 scooters on the Vogo platform, worth $100 million.
Vogo’s offerings will also be available for Ola’s customer base of over 150 million, directly from the Ola app.
“Our investment in Vogo will help build a smart multi-modal network for first-last mile connectivity in the country,” said Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO, Ola. It had also invested in Vogo as part of the company’s Series A fundraising.
Vogo, a point-to-point dockless scooter sharing company, is currently present in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. It has served over 20 million km on its platform.
Every Vogo scooter comes with an Internet of Things device that allows the customer to access the key via a one-time password (OTP). This eliminates the need for human intervention and offers consumers a seamless experience, the firm said.
Untapped opportunity
“India presents a unique, untapped opportunity for scooter-sharing,” said Anand Ayyadurai, founder and CEO, Vogo.
Start-ups addressing short-distance transport (i.e. less than five miles) have taken the mobility space by storm in recent months, most notably with the rise of bike and scooter start-ups, according to research firm CB Insights. It said bikes and scooters, which allow people to easily move shorter distances, can help commuters access public transport hubs several miles away.
Ola’s rival Uber is also embracing bike-sharing and repositioning itself as an all-encompassing transportation services provider, with the ultimate goal of combating personal vehicle ownership, according to CB Insights. It said almost all of the funding in the bike and scooter space had gone to sharing platforms rather than bike or scooter hardware. The main driver of this recent boom in funding has been the rise of the dockless system, which originated in China with traditional bikes back in 2016 but has since spread to the U.S. for traditional bikes, e-bikes, and electric scooters, said CB Insights.
