Swiggy partners with Bounce to launch bike taxi services

Since the initial days of its business as a food delivery platform, Swiggy has been bullish on strengthening its logistics play to drive growth. As this business unfurled and Swiggy added services to its platform, it only became even more apparent that the firm is leaving no stone unturned in capitalizing on this strong logistics play it has built for itself.

After launching hyperlocal delivery platform Swiggy Stores, the company is now in the last leg of launching its concierge like service Swiggy Go. Plus, the latest development says the company is also launching bike taxi services in partnership with a scooter rental and bike taxi platform that is catching a lot of eyes these days - Bounce.

Where Swiggy Go and Swiggy Stores are ways to add up revenue models while mostly utilizing the available delivery fleet, the bike taxi partnership is a special set up.

Here, the app which is used for booking will be Bounce, and the person that comes to pick and drop the customer, will be wearing a Swiggy t-shirt. This setup is exceptionally rewarding for both parties. In low demand areas or timings, the delivery personnel can be found sitting idle on his bike will now receive requests via Bounce to pick and drop customers.

This adds revenue to Swiggy’s P&L statement and to the delivery boy’s pockets; and it adds fleet numbers and hence scale to Bounce’s operations.

This partnership is already operational in low demand cities like Indore and Ahmedabad as the low density of order volume gives Swiggy time and space to “experiment”, as stated by ET sources. Further, this allows Bounce to pilot operations in new tier - II and III cities and expand at a much lower cost.

As the two-wheeler mobility solutions startup Bounce is entering growth stage with new infusion of funds from the likes of Sachin Bansal and an interest from SoftBank, this partnership with Swiggy only strengthens its position in the market as a great avenue for investment.

In fact, the reports also mention that the Naspers backed Swiggy might invest in Bounce itself. Bounce, as of now, is out in the market looking for a $100-150 million funding round.

The only problems that the two face with this partnership is state transport legislations, where some rules do not allow this kind of arrangements to help customers travel one place from another or have outlawed bike taxis. The ones that do allow this require specific prerequisite documentation and verification to be completed before the process starts.

However, this doesn’t put a damp on Swiggy’s bike taxi aspirations as the firm looks towards making a bigger city play in the next six months with Gurugram and Bengaluru as initial contenders.