Rapido, the eight-year-old Indian bike taxi startup, is increasing into the cab market within the South Asian nation, the place Uber and its homegrown competitor Ola dominate.

The Bengaluru-based startup has begun a pilot of its cab service within the Southern metropolis of Hyderabad, TechCrunch has realized and confirmed. The corporate plans to increase the service to different cities, together with Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru and Chandigarh. The Delhi-NCR launch of Rapido cabs will happen as early as subsequent week, three folks acquainted with the matter informed TechCrunch.

Till lately, Rapido prospects have been capable of hail a trip on a motorized motorbike or a three-wheeled auto rickshaw. The corporate’s resolution so as to add vehicles within the combine diversifies its choices and will assist it increase its buyer base. It additionally creates a stickiness for present prospects who may need beforehand opted to take an Uber on these events once they wanted a trip in a automotive.

“At Rapido, we’re thrilled to share that our take a look at run in Hyderabad for Rapido Cabs is off to a implausible begin. The town’s vibrant market has warmly embraced us, and the constructive response is really heartening. As we navigate our path ahead, we’re dedicated to maintaining you intently knowledgeable about our progress and eagerly anticipate bringing our modern providers to different cities,” a Rapido spokesperson mentioned in a press release to TechCrunch.

Along with providing cabs, Rapido is seeking to combine intercity bus ticket reserving inside its app by partnering with Zingbus, a supply informed TechCrunch. The partnership would assist Rapido develop its gross merchandise worth and Gurugram-based Zingbus increase its buyer base.

Rapido and Zingbus didn’t instantly reply to requests for touch upon the partnership.

Based in 2015, Rapido operates in additional than 100 cities in India and has over 25 million app downloads. The startup additionally has over 10 million prospects and crossed 100 million rides, per the statistics out there on its web site.

For a while, India noticed a duopoly within the app-based cab market the place Uber and Ola held 90% share collectively. Nevertheless, the nation has began seeing the shift in the previous couple of months, with domestically grown BluSmart getting into with its all-electric fleet and Mountain View-headquartered InDrive entering into the market with its distinctive haggling mannequin.

Though India has quite a few cabs, the price-sensitive nature of its inhabitants has led firms together with Uber and Ola to supply bike taxis in main cities. Rapido comes as a stable various to those firms, with its vast presence. The startup touts to have over 1,000,000 bike drivers on the platform to supply inexpensive intra-city journey and last-mile connectivity.

Nonetheless, the dearth of readability on bike taxi laws in numerous Indian states makes it tougher for all platforms to proceed to challenge their progress out there.

Rapido has raised $324 million in complete, in keeping with the info out there on Tracxn, with the final spherical of $180 million introduced in April final yr. The startup counts VC companies together with WestBridge, Shell Ventures, Nexus Enterprise Companions and AdvantEdge, amongst its traders. It additionally has backing from meals supply aggregator Swiggy and Indian two-wheeler large TVS Motor Firm.