MyPickup is on a Quest to transform Indian mobility through weekly and monthly subscription-based shared electric rides for daily commutes.
https://www.mypickup.in
It gives Suresh Kothari and me immense joy to collaborate with Abhijeet and the team to bring about a meaningful and timely change to the status quo.
India’s mobility ecosystem has been hurtling towards an inflection point for some time. Here's some of the lowdown we are all aware of:
1️⃣ The first and last-mile experiences of public transport remain broken by design,
2️⃣ Congestion, in and out of the vehicles, remains a problem,
3️⃣ Aggregators continue to offer substandard customer experiences, be it cab availability, the ride, the hassles of cancellation, or the surge pricing,
4️⃣ Drivers continue to undercut Aggregators to go into business on their own (“cancel and pay me cash”),
5️⃣ At the same time, gig drivers and auto-wallahs have their own challenges with cancellations, unstable monthly incomes, high vehicle maintenance, and frustrated riders.
6️⃣ On-time unavailability of P2P rides at peak time remains a challenge
As Dara wakes up to the rude Indian awakening, Bhavish maintains a full plate with EV and AI, and hard-working, purpose-driven folks like Kiran continue to suffer, the need and the opportunity to innovate in this space has never been clearer or more compelling; though daunting.
Our humble investment will give Abhijeet & Co. the bandwidth to continue refining the proposition to seize this opportunity and roll out the red carpet to #investors for the ongoing seed round.
In addition, we are open to investing in up to a hundred fleet assets via a leasing model in the next thirty-six months—more when the paradigm expands to additional urban centers outside Bengaluru.
Success or failure aren’t foregone conclusions. Nothing is at this stage of the startup journey. Ideas are cheap, insight is rare, and execution is rarer.
The insight is clear, the idea is there, and early signs point to a team that can execute it if they play their cards right. I expand upon it in our high-level reflections (out soon on my substack)
The conditions are ripe for the proposition to succeed. Moreover, it has adjacencies and appeal outside India too.
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As investors, our job is to see if a mighty oak is hidden in the acorn of startup ideas. If so, we invest in the vision of what that oak can look like when fully grown.
We believe there’s a sky-piercing oak hidden inside MyPickup. It’s an idea whose time has come.
Whether you are:
1️⃣ a #VC operating with mobility, climate tech, consumer business, or sector-agnostic theses,
2️⃣ an OEM building in #EV space,
3️⃣ a #FinTech innovating asset financing, or
4️⃣ a fellow commuter who has felt the pains and identifies with MyPickup’s value proposition,
connect with Abhijeet and tag someone in the comments who you know will support this idea.
Kamal Varun