Bounce, the Bengaluru-headquartered scooter rental start-up, has begun replacing its fleet of 30,000 petrol-driven scooters with electric scooters. Rather than buy the vehicles from someone else, Bounce would make them in-house, the company’s Co-Founder, H R Vivekananda, told BusinessLine today.

For this purpose, Bounce today announced its partnership with another start-up, Chara, which manufactures ‘switched reluctance motors’, which are magnet-free motors. Chara will design the motors, which will then be manufactured by a third party and supplied to Bounce.

Magnet-less motors are much cheaper and are at least as efficient as the regular motors, Chara’s Founder and CEO, Bhakta Kesavachar, told Business Line today.

Bounce’s offer is this: book a Bounce scooter on an app, pick-up a nearby vehicle and drop it off at any destination, for Rs 6 per km (though if your destination is some far off place, there could be an additional charge.)

Vivekanand said that the economics work out well for the customer and the company. To the customers, Bounce is much cheaper than a taxi or an autorickshaw. As for Bounce, there is a clear profit in every kilometer the customer rides.

For charging, Bounce has tied-up with several local mom-and-pop stores and has so far done “over 10 million EV-kilometers using this network”.

The company has done 35 million rides so far, since its inception in 2019. The service is in several cities, but mostly in Bengaluru. In the pre-Covid times, Bounce averaged 1.2 lakh rides a day, earning revenues of Rs 70-80 lakh daily.

Vivekanand said that Bounce has raised about $200 million so far. In January 2020, the company raised $ 105 million from a group of investors led by Accel Partners and Facebook Co-founder, Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital Group. Other investors of Bounce include Falcon Edge, Chiratae Ventures, Maverick Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Omidyar Network India and Qualcomm Ventures. Some analysts had valued Bounce at $ 520 million last year.