Bounce’s Rs 500 crore electric vehicles punt

Why read this story?

Editor's note: That Bounce hasn’t already gone out of business is God’s eighth-day miracle. Before the pandemic struck, the company’s yellow and red bikes were everywhere in Bengaluru. People took a fancy to the quirky scooters to travel short distances and discarded them once they were done. For a generation raised on use and discard, Bounce fit like a hand in a glove. Two years into business, Bounce was clocking 100,000 trips in the city every day. A fleet of 18,000-20,000 scooters being used by at least six people everyday. Enthused by their immediate success, Bounce’s co-founders pitched the company with a strategy that had most investors weak in the knees. To paraphrase from the company’s pitch deck strategy: Bounce is the fastest company to get to 1,000 rides a day, fastest to get to 10,000 rides, fastest to get to 100,000 rides and promises to be the fastest to get to 1,000,000 rides per day. Give us money.  The money came. In January 2020, Bounce raised $99 million in a round led by storied venture capital firm Accel and B Capital …