Sachin Bansal fuels scooter sharing apps Vogo and Bounce with $6 Mn debt

In less than two months after investing $100 million in ride-hailing firm Ola, Flipkart's co-founder Sachin Bansal is now backing scooter rental platforms Vogo and Bounce.

Bansal has reportedly made about $3-4 million debt investment in each firm. The investment is said to be part of money management exercise by Bansal holding firm BAC Acquisition.

The investment was part of BAC treasury operations, as per the company statement quoted by TOI report. BAC Acquisitions Private Limited was founded by Bansal and his IITD batchmate Ankit Agarwal, former Director at Bank of America, in December last year.

In January, Bansal had put in about Rs 50 crore ($7.05 million) into the entity. Earlier, Bansal had also lent Rs 500 crore to NBFCs Altico and Indostar.

Sachin Bansal has exited Flipkart with about $1 billion for his stakes in the e-commerce firm. Ever since several avenues had been announced where he planned to invest his money.

The development comes after Ola last year committed $100 million investment in Vogo to help it expand and finance 1 lakh scooters.

Both the firms will use the debt to finance scooters and hardware as they are most capital intensive part of their business.

Vogo is backed by investors including Stellaris Venture Partners and Matrix Partners India, Hero MotoCorp Chairman Pawan Munjal’s family office and Taxifosure founder Aprameya Radhakrishna.

Founded in 2016 by Anand Ayyadurai, Padmanabhan Balakrishnan, and Sanchit Mittal, Vogo provides scooters on rent for short one-way trips with over 200 pick up points across Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

Whereas Bounce, which is own by WickedRide, count Sequoia and Accel as its investors. In November last year, Bounce had acquired bicycle sharing platform Ofo. It also offers motorbike rental services.

The Bengaluru-based firm is also in advance stage of talks to raise around $70- 100 million from new and existing investors.