Today, Rapido has nearly half the share of the overall ride-hailing market, with monthly active users at ~50 million across bike, auto and cab taxi versus Uber’s 30 million (as of July-25).

It’s come a long way since founding in 2015, nearly 10 years ago, fighting the Uber-Ola duopoly to emerge as a dominant player of reckon. Even Uber CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi called Rapido a formidable competitor in India in his recent podcast with Nikhil Kamath.

Also, Rapido has been in the news recently – with the launch of food delivery services ‘Ownly’ to now fight the duopoly in food delivery. And its recent partnerships with OTA (Online Travel Aggregators) to launch flight, hotel, bus and train ticketing. It’s on a steady pursuit to become the everything app, for every Indian.

In this podcast, Shantanu and I explore in this podcast how Rapido began as a B2B logistics venture called The and pivoted to the bike taxi model, the evolution of the taxi and ride hailing segment in India, key aspects from Rapido’s business model like it’s zero commission fees, optimizing for ~4 min ETA and more. Do check it out!

Key Timestamps

00:10: Rapido – Introduction & Industry Context

03:44: Rapido's Big Market Moments & Partnerships

05:07: Founding and Evolution of Rapido

06:53: Initial Growth, Guerilla Marketing & Expansion

09:50: Regulatory and Safety Challenges

11:30: COVID Pivot – Grocery & Essential Deliveries

14:32: Product Expansion: Autos and Cabs

16:25: Execution Philosophy & Tier 2 City Focus

18:40: Early Investors and Strategic Advice

20:02: Competition: Rapido vs Ola/Uber Models

21:36: Ride-Hailing Industry Timeline in India

24:57: Rapido's Diversified Business Model

27:10: Subscription Model for Drivers

29:48: Driver Earnings and Platform Stickiness

32:23: Product Strategy vs Ola/Uber

33:56: Cost-Frugal Culture & Tech Optimization

36:20: Customer and Driver Experience Innovations

38:17: Founders’ Vision and Bharat Focus

40:05: Market Share, Financial Metrics & Operational Insights

43:10: Final Thoughts on Disruption and Growth

Urban Company is a home services provider with plans to become a publicly traded unicorn soon.

Its story begins with a fundamental frustration experienced by millions of urban Indians - finding reliable, professional home service providers. Hiring a plumber, electrician, or beautician meant navigating an unorganized sector plagued by unprofessionalism, price opacity, and trust issues. Service providers often arrived late, charged arbitrary rates, and delivered inconsistent quality, while customers had no recourse for poor service.

Since its inception in 2014, Urban Company has emerged as an undisputed leader in the organized home services sector in India, perfecting a challenging service marketplace business. In this episode, we cover the journey from being UrbanClap, started as a Uber for X marketplace model to Urban Company, a full stack service provider. The co-founders, Abhiraj Singh Bhal, Varun Khaitan, and Raghav Chandra, each bring a unique skill set to the company, set a high standard of customer focus and have succeeded in building a unique institution, through training and standardization efforts that have set industry standards.

Urban Company is inspiring - a near monopoly in Indian online home services, but not without its own challenges in growth potential. There’s currently <2% online penetration of home services, the target market of mid to high income urban households in India is limited to ~13% of total households and quality supply is a constraint.Tune into our podcast episode, where we break down Urban Company's past, present, and future. We’ve also attempted to take it up a notch this time. Let us know what you think!

Links:

1/ Choti Soch Ad Campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU3y54ybZqA

2/ UC Culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEBPdaABZB4&t=198s

Atomberg Technologies, popular for their energy efficient fans, is one of the few D2C-first brands in India focused on bringing real value to the masses by being tech and product-first and manufacturing inhouse in India. They do this through smart energy savings technology (eg. BLDC motors) and modern design, innovating in a largely ignored small home appliances business (eg. ceiling fans). It recently hit INR 1000 Cr ARR, a big milestone and one few new-age companies have achieved so far. For comparative benchmarks, Mamaearth is at ~1900 cr and boAt at ~3000 cr.

The company was seeded in IIT Bombay's Society forInnovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE). Cofounders, Manoj Meena and Shibam Das are technologists at heart, who dabbled with multiple business models and pivoted a number of times before hitting their Aha! moment, and seeing an opportunity to revolutionalize the $60bn home appliances industry. Early on, they were joined by Arindam Paul, currently the Chief Business Officer, who has been instrumental in cracking distribution for the team. He is a marketing guru sharing who share real deal x No fluff lessons to help others professionals and upcoming startups.

In this episode, we discuss how they first focused on B2B and then moved B2C, the background of the founders and the company's founding story, its products and BLDC technology and key marketing actions that have helped them disrupt a competitive and fragmented small home appliances industry. We also share our take on the way forward for the company with two potential path forwards: 1) Likely will be acquired by one of the industry stalwarts like Crompton or Orient. Like Minimalist by HUL; 2) Build on an Indian opportunity to be truly insurgent and innovative like a Dyson for the masses. The latter is the more exciting one. And, the one we are rooting for.