Rapido Raises $180 Million for Bike Taxis: Travel Startup Funding This Week
Photo Credit: Rapido handles 20 million bike taxi orders in India every month. Unsplash / Arihant Daga
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This week, Indian online food ordering and delivery platform Swiggy is backing Rapido to help its expand its fleet, while VC firm Andreessen Horowitz has launched a program called a16z START to fund, and nurture, the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Travel Startup Funding This Week
Each week we round up travel startups that have recently received or announced funding. Please email Travel Tech Reporter Justin Dawes at jd@skift.com if you have funding news.This week, travel startups announced more than $234 million in funding.
>>Rapido, a bike taxi service that operates in 100 cities across India, has raised $180 million in a Series D round.
Swiggy, an Indian online food ordering and delivery platform, led the round with TVS Motor Company. Existing investors Westbridge, Shell Ventures and Nexus Ventures also participated.
The platform has transacted more than 300 million orders, and currently processes 20 million orders every month, with the help of 450,000 monthly active drivers.
"We want to build a platform that is reliable and has both customers and captains (our drivers) satisfied on the same platform," said co-founder Aravind Sanka in a LinkedIn post. "We want to pr