BENGALURU: The demand for two-wheelers and the trend of renting them out are on the rise in the city as driving a car or riding a cab has become an unimaginable task in the city’s traffic. Most of the two wheeler renting companies in the city are out of stock during the weekends.
ONN Bikes, a two-wheeler renting company that launched more than a year ago operates in various cities of the country including Hyderabad, Udaipur, Mumbai and Bengaluru. Nanit Jain, CEO of the start-up, says that Bengaluru has the highest demand of two-wheelers on rent compared to other cities, mostly because of the student-crowd in the city and tourist places to visit nearby such as Nandi Hills and Kodagu. The company started with 200 two-wheelers and within a year, it has expanded to 3,500 bikes in Bengaluru, most of which get sold out on weekends.
Grab On Rent, a company that rents out all kinds of products, recently added two-wheelers for renting in February. The company adds products depending on the feedback and wish list it gets from the customers. In its inception, Grab On Rent had two categories of appliances and party essentials. Now it has nine categories, the latest being the two-wheelers.
Though the initiative is more of extending its platform to the otherwise existing bike rental market, Shubam Jain, co-founder and CEO of the company says that the idea had been long pending.
“When it comes to renting bikes, it is not like renting a refrigerator or other things. We need to ensure that two-wheelers are fully functional. It has about fifty servicing aspects to be looked at before giving it out,” says Shubham. Currently they have over 600 bikes online.
“It is with my own personal experience that I’ve noticed and observed how cost effective two-wheeler is especially in Bengaluru. If I take a car from my home in Bellandur to my office at Koramangala, it takes about an hour and a half. But if I borrow my friend’s bike, I reach office in 20 minutes,” he laughs. This happens so not only because two-wheeler is swifter to drive than a car but also because you can take narrow routes and lanes, which otherwise, is not accessible by a car.
Rent On Go, a Bengaluru-based rental company that caters to home-need renting facilities, is now mainly focusing on renting out two-wheelers. “A lot of people in the city are coming from other states. Most of them don’t opt to buy a vehicle but need the commuting options. That is where we provide renting facility at a cheap price,” says Vikash Jalan, co-founder of the company established in 2013.
The company currently has 46 two-wheelers but they will add more by next month due to high demand.
User Profile
Nanit Jain, ONN Bikes, says that most of the users are between the age of 18 and 35. Shubham Jain, Grab on Rent, has categorised the users in the age group of 22 to 26 years and 30 to 35 years. He says he was surprised to note people in the 30s use bikes as actively as the young college students. While the former age group uses the facilities on weekends for a getaway, people in their 30s rent them for months, mainly to commute to work. Female users are comparatively less. But, Activa is rented 65 per cent by females.
Cost-Effective
The two-wheeler aggregators agree that renting a bike is not only cost-effective with rates as cheap as Rs 3 per kilometre or Rs 300 a day but also saves a person from “bikers remorse”, which is an eventual regret of spending lavish money on the bikes. The facility also gives them opportunity to try and then decide on buying, they say.