Zypp Electric, a leading last-mile delivery fleet management company, jumped into the EV-based ecosystem when electric vehicles were not the talk of the town. In 2017, Akash Gupta and Rashi Agarwal started the electric scooter provider business with the aim to help India embrace sustainable mobility and curb pollution.
‘Reduce pollution on every delivery’ is the primary focus of Zypp Electric, cofounder Akash Gupta told Livemint.
“Solving the problem of pollution was the largest opportunity I found in this business. Being an avid traveler, I saw clean air in many countries. But in India, people talk about pollution every day. So, other countries like the US, and China were picking up electric vehicles. Then I thought of bringing it to India so that we can give people a clear mobility option. Hence, I left my high-paying job and started this business from ground zero,” Akash Gupta said.
Zypp Electric's business model is very new in India which never existed here, he said, adding that being a full-stack EV service provider, the company is decarbonizing last-mile deliveries.
“We get hold of the vehicles from an OEM who manufactures them, then we put our IoT tech on top of those vehicles. We get financiers to buy these vehicles for us. After this, we find drivers for these bikes. And then we connect with customers like Zomato, Swiggy, Amazon, Flipkart, or Big Basket for deliveries to them. So such a full stack approach never existed which is why our business model is very different,” the Zypp Electric cofounder told Livemint.
The company also created a core experimental team to train and manage drivers. Akash Gupta said that the business is supporting the lives of low-income group people who are hired as drivers at Zypp Electric following a strong onboarding process for them.
“We give them the industry’s best insurance service, an amount of ₹1 lakh for their personal well-being, doctors' on-call support, and Yoga support. On a click of a button, they get service of the bike, a maintenance ticket, charging or maintenance or swapping support, extra money as credit, and a lot of other things,” he added.
Zypp Electric was founded at a time when EVs, battery stations, the right kind of batteries, and knowledge to ride electric scooters were not there, Akash Gupta said while explaining the challenges faced by the company throughout its journey so far.
“Financing was a big issue”, he asserted. “People were not able to finance a startup doing electric vehicles. But we created layers of financing and OEMs who want to work with us,” the company's co-founder said.
Currently, Zypp Electric has around 15,000 EVs on the ground, but the company aims at deploying 2,00,000 electric vehicles in the next two years and 5,00,000 EVs in the next 3.5 years, he emphasized.
Further, Akash Gupta informed Livemint that the plan is to launch Zypp Electric scooters in five more cities by the end of this year. As of now, they are providing the service in two cities.
“We can launch in a few global geographies also if we do this well in India. So our vision is to continue to expand and decarbonize last-mile deliveries, as much as we can. Currently, we are planning to hit half a million e-scooters in the next 3.5 years. I am able to scale it to almost 1000+ crore business,” he said.
During the first year, Zypp Electric earned ₹50 lakhs revenue, and now the company's plan is to take the business into the ₹500 crore club this year, the cofounder said.
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