MUMBAI:
Grip, India’s largest alternative investment platform, has partnered with Chartered Bike, a fully automated public bike sharing system, to offer individual investors an opportunity to invest in sustainable and environment-friendly asset products. The partnership will also help Chartered Bike fastrack its deployment rate across geographies, help the company scale better, and have far more users in the country use a sustainable mode of last-mile commute.
Grip will facilitate the leasing of assets worth $3 million for Chartered Bike over a period of two-three months, through its wealth creation platform.
Talking about the partnership, Nikhil Aggarwal, Co-Founder & CEO, of Grip, shared, “Investors today are keen to invest in companies or funds that aim to deliver high financial returns while creating a positive or social impact. Sustainable investing has been actively integrated among asset owners. We at Grip are happy to build a portfolio of eco-friendly, reliable, and affordable assets that are fast-growing and profitable in the long run. Chartered Bike is creating a sustainable and efficient mobility solution across the country and investors on Grip can now fractionally own these eBikes that will help reduce the carbon footprint in India.”
Grip is the first to provide asset leasing services to Chartered Bike and plans to help the latter reduce capex costs and focus on enhancing its network. With over 4500 bikes deployed in the country, Chartered Bike plans to revolutionise last mile commute and build an eco-friendly micro-mobility platform. They plan to add 5 cities every quarter to their operations.
Commenting on the partnership, Sanyam Gandhi, Founder, Chartered Bike, said, “For a long time now giving the customer a comfortable and premium experience of transportation has been our main and only focus. We currently have 4000 Bikes, 500 Electric Bikes, and 450 stations across 7 cities. As we expand our services to more cities in the country, partnering with Grip will help us revolutionise last mile commute and strengthen our micro-mobility platform.”
Micro mobility is one of the biggest opportunities in the sharing economy with the explosion in the number of last-mile deliveries and services. There lies an $800 Bn opportunity in this industry, of which less than 10% has been utilised to date. Chartered Bike intends to use the funds raised from Grip for purchasing and assembling Electric Bikes and creating India’s largest micro-mobility platform solution and the largest fleet of e-bikes.