YULU BIKES PLAY A PIVOTAL ROLE IN MINIMIZING AIR POLLUTION AND REDUCING TRAFFIC CONGESTION SO TAKE A JOYOUS RIDE ON IT!
Increasing the toxicity of air due to a multitude of environment unfriendly actions of humans creates havoc on the planet. The upsurge of vehicles to commute is the biggest cause in making the air poisonous to breathe; dire consequences of using vehicles have drastically disturbed the balance.
Dreadful effects of Air Pollution and Traffic Congestion on the environment require conscious attention and need to be tackled by the smart use of technology. Here, Yulu Bikes came into the picture. Yulu Bikes Pvt. Ltd– An environment-friendly Startup!
Yulu Bikes started its operations in Jan 2018 to address the rising air pollution and traffic congestion problems with the use of technology. Yulu provides an eco-friendly UMaaS (Urban Mobility as a Service) that is an affordable and scalable solution for the mentioned problems and is the first and last-mile commute option for citizens.
Their vehicles are designed for shared micro-mobility for Indian climatic and road conditions. In the present times, Yulu bikes is changing the way Indians are moving in big cities. The Chief Executive Officer of Yulu Bikes Pvt. Ltd, Amit Gupta says, “We believe Electric Vehicles are the future of mobility for known reasons like good quality of air and our vehicles are setting the trend for EV adoption in our big cities of India.”
Key Officials of the Company:
- Amit Gupta – Co-founder & CEO
- R K Misra – Co-founder & President Ecosystem Partnerships
- Naveen D – Co-founder & CTO
- Hemant Gupta Co-founder & Chief Of Operations
PURPOSE OF YULU BIKES
Their central focus is to decongest the urban traffic by providing a highly scalable, affordable, efficient, and clean mode for first and last-mile connectivity and short distance commute.
The future of mobility is Smart, Shared, Sustainable and Small. Electric vehicles have a key role in this transition. Hence, the idea of smaller and efficient clean energy vehicles was an obvious route that they chose. Through Yulu, they address modern days’ urban commute problems such as first and last mile connectivity through micro-mobility options.
MICRO MOBILITY HAS A LOT OF POTENTIAL
Yulu Bikes, since the beginning, has been actively engaging with various stakeholders including city, state and the Central Government to propose and facilitate the Public Policy Formulation towards shared and sustainable mobility such as Public Bike Sharing (PBS) and Electric Mobility. These policies lead to the creation of NMT (Non-Motorized Transport) and vehicle charging infrastructure. That’s the juncture where the company needs support and investment from city and state governments.
Yulu Bikes works closely with corporate giants like Intel, Infosys, Wipro, etc. as well as some local government bodies like CIDCO (Maharashtra), DULT (Bangalore), DMRC (Delhi) etc.
Micro mobility has an enormous opportunity for Indian cities and service providers that can collectively help to address some of the most complex transportation challenges for urban areas like traffic congestion, fossil fuel emissions, and air quality, and uneven access to transit.
Globally, urban mobility is witnessing a historic shift from vehicle ownership to shared mobility as a service. The future of urban mobility is Shared & Sustainable that is Always Available, Easily Accessible & Commonly Affordable.
Micro mobility’s potential extends well beyond connecting people to mass transit; more than 60% of the trips in big cities are of less than 5 Km and they are targeting this segment through eco-friendly vehicles designed for a single passenger and sharing usage model.
Yulu Bikes target young millennials, working professionals and college students in Tier 1 & Tier 2 smart cities of India. Yulu has the largest fleet of shared bicycles as well as electric scooters in India. Ride hailing giant – Uber has also partnered with Yulu Bikes for making urban commute efficient and eco-friendly.
INNOVATION- NEED OF THE HOUR
The structured business model and limelight on micro-mobility give Yulu Bikes an edge of competition. Many brands and companies have launched and shut down due to their incapability of understanding the need for a product.
People, at Yulu Bikes, are passionate about design and innovation for urban mobility. They understood early in the excursion that the form factor will play a major role while scaling Yulu services across the country.
With this view, they invested their bandwidth in designing India’s first sharing-friendly smart bicycle, ’Yulu Move’ that is suitable for our local, and cultural usage patterns. They have been taking help from local manufacturers to produce them in India since the beginning.
After running the service with bicycles and understanding the need of the market, they decided to add electric mobility to their service. Looking at the gap in the market, they designed ‘Yulu Miracle’ which is a unique battery-operated, lightweight and easy to ride small 2 wheeler.
Yulu Miracle has a maximum speed of 25 kmph and it comes under the exempted category where there is no requirement for registration number driving license or helmet. It has been enabling individuals to take eco-friendly rides at pocket-friendly prices reducing carbon footprint. Yulu Miracle is using a swappable lithium-ion battery and has developed highly scalable networking of charging stations.
Yulu has 1.5 million registered users and is currently present in Bengaluru, Greater Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, and Bhubaneswar. Yulu has grown to become a movement because it is solving the complex problem of First and Last Mile connectivity while also helping in the alleviation of congestion and air pollution. Yulu has laid the foundation for building a massive scale for EV mobility in India.
They are the only company in the country working in the micro-mobility segment operating with swappable battery solutions for EVs.
ROADBLOCKS ARE ESSENTIAL FOR HITTING THE CRESENDO
“The ecosystem for the development of electric vehicles is at a nascent stage compared to other countries. “~Amit Gupta
There are two indispensable factors which form the crux. Primarily, they need a mindset change. Secondly, they need partners of the ecosystem to think alike. Yulu Bikes have seen the first signs of change in the mindset and adoption. The trend of the cycle has grown terrifically as compared to 3 years ago.
There are classic examples right from CEOs to individual employees who are choosing an eco-friendly mode of transport to work. They are also aware of the foul air and want to reduce the carbon emitted by all the fuel-based vehicles.
Today many private IT parks are offering spaces to companies to set up charging stations or parking zones. The first mile and last mile connectivity should be adopted by every commuter to ease the traffic congestion.
When they incepted Yulu, no one believed that people would use small and shared 2 wheelers for the urban commute. People thought that their vehicles would be stolen or broken, users would get crushed due to accidents on the road, and infrastructure or policy would never happen for micro-mobility. The virtuoso, Amit Gupta with audacity says,
“We are very glad to not only crack the product-market fit but also been able to put together a thriving eco-system for our category.”
ACCOLADES TO BOAST OF AND FUTURE PROSPECTS
They are currently working in Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai, Delhi, and Bhubaneshwar, and envision a plan to introduce Yulu service in 50+ cities by the end of 2020.
Today, more than 1.5 million users are riding the change with them and truly believe in their incredible mission. YULU has the largest fleet of bicycles or e-bikes in India.
Currently, they have 8,500 bikes which are known as Yulu Move and 2500 micro-light electric two-wheelers known as YULU Miracles on the road.
The goal is to introduce Yulu service in all Tier 1 and Smart cities in India. They are expecting to be the largest micro-mobility player in India and have 1 million shared electric 2 wheelers by 2022. They will also expand outside of India by launching this service with the help of strategic partnerships.
