Bounce closes ride-sharing service and cuts staff

Bounce was a start up company which came with a ride-sharing service. The now-defunct ride-sharing service Bounce was launched in 2014. 

Bangalore-based startup Bounce, which recently entered the two-wheeler market in India, has now announced that it will discontinue  its existing ride-sharing service. Currently, Bounce sells only Infinity E1 electric scooters in the market at an ex-showroom price of Rs 70,499 after Fame-II subsidy. The Infinity E1 with replaceable batteries is essentially the scooter of 22-KYMCO, as Bounce overtook the company in October 2021. Bounce ridesharing service closed after 8 years. The battery replacement network is currently only active in Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Why did Bounce stop the ride-sharing service?

The ridesharing service by Bounce has been running since 2014 and was discontinued last year due to business failures which happened due to the occurrence of pandemic. Terminating the sharing service meant that the employees concerned had to be laid off, but the company says they were given advance notice of the transition and that most of them had already found work elsewhere.

This announcement comes amid relatively weak sales for the Infinity E1. The e-scooter is yet to be operational. According to the government portal VAHAN, there are only 650 registrations each month, with the number dropping to less than 550 in some cases. In comparison to much more expensive offerings, such as the Ola S1 Pro and TVS iQube, now showing five-figure monthly sales figures.

The Bounce Battery Replacement Network operates in Bangalore, where approximately 2 million replacements have been made at 100 existing battery replacement stations. Hyderabad is the only city with a battery change facility, with around 40-50 stations, but its availability is currently limited to B2B services only.