Going back to the nascent stages of his startup journey, Pavan said that Rapido was his eighth attempt. ”Everything seemed like a great idea until I failed. First, I got into manufacturing pipes where I lost not just my savings but also my own. Then, I got into marketing for which I even had some education, so went into marketing, but failed terribly. Then, I went into payments and logistics. My eighth attempt was Rapido,” he said.
The Rapido co-founder explained the rationale behind his work ethic. “When we were doing our previous startup which was into logistics, we were doing great business, but one thing which wasn’t feeling right was that it was not creating any impact. We were raking in great revenue and our investors were happy, but something wasn’t feeling right,” he said.
Coming to how Rapido was conceived, Pavan said, “We call ourselves entrepreneurs by choice, but we didn’t have any eureka moment. We figured out the problem statements that we can solve, what our strengths are and if we have the skill set to do it. ”Today, we are in 400 cities and expanding to 1,000 cities,” he concluded.
Rapido, an unlisted company founded in 2015 as theKarrie by Aravind Sanka, Pavan Guntupalli, and SR Rishikesh had originally gained traction with its ‘Bike-Taxi’ offering. It was the first company to offer two-wheeler taxi service in the market and quickly gained market share between 2015-2018, soon after which it launched three-wheelers as well as cab service.
