Ola invests $100M in Vogo; bike rentals to be available on Ola

Ola has invested $100 million in Vogo, to add 100,000 scooters to the latter’s platform. Vogo will also be available on the Ola app directly. Ola had previously invested an unnamed amount in Vogo during its Series A funding with Matrix Partners India and Stellaris Venture Partners. According to Crunchbase, Vogo has raised $8-10 million so far, minus the current Ola funding.

Vogo claims to have 100,000 users and who have used its bikes for over 20 million kms. It currently operates in Hyderabad and Bangalore and has 200 stations across these cities.

Competition

• In October, Fae Bikes, a Bangalore based bike rental service, and Okinawa Autotech, an e-bike manufacturer, partnered to make 70 Okinawa Ridge+ bikes available on Fae Bikes. Fae Bikes will expand its fleet to 5,000 electric bikes in the next year, and is present in 2 locations in Bangalore currently – Electronic City and BTM Layout.
• In September MobiKwik partnered with ONN Bikes to rent motorcycles on an hourly, daily and weekly basis in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kota, Mysuru and Udaipur.
• In July, Dunzo, was supposed to launch “bike sharing” in Gurugram, but is unclear if it has already done so.

Ola’s recent developments

• In October, Foodpanda added 30 more cities to its repertoire, and is now present in 50 cities. The month before, it launched in thirteen cities. In October, Foodpanda acquired Mumbai-based cloud kitchen HolaChef, nearly six months after the latter shuttered its operations.
• In the same month, Ola’s communications head Viraj Chouhan left the company, less than a year after he joined. Anand Subramanian took over as Head of Communications.
• In the same month, Cashfree partnered with Ola Money to launch a deferred payments service.
• It launched Guardian, a real time monitoring system for its cabs, in Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune, with plans to launch it in Delhi and Kolkata by October end, and other cities by the end of 2018.