BLive Raises $1 Mn Capital In Pre-Series A Round The company has seen a threefold growth in e-bike tours driven by a boom in domestic tourism, post-pandemic
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Goa-based Electric Vehicle (EV) experience platform BLive, on Wednesday, announced the raise of $1 million, part of follow-on capital of pre-Series A round of funding. The funding which was a combination of debt and equity was led by LetsVenture, Mumbai Angels, JITO, and CreditWise Capital.
The company had raised funds led by a strategic investment from DNA Networks in September 2019. Post-COVID, the company received funding from LetsVenture, Mumbai Angels, JITO, and CreditWise Capital.
Founded in 2018 by Samarth Kholkar and Sandeep Mukherjee, BLive offers unique, experiential, guided tours on electric bikes with an aim to promote sustainable tourism in India.
"At BLive, we want to reduce all hurdles for consumers to transition to electric mobility, whether it is with EV Tours where consumers are getting a first-hand experience of EVs or our EV Store, where we seamlessly guide consumers through choice, expertise, and convenience of ownership. This year, we are looking at growing the EV tours to over 30 locations and adding more two-wheeler EV brands and ownership models to the EV store through both online and offline channels," commented Samarth Kholkar and Sandeep Mukherjee, co-founders, BLive, in a collective statement.
In 2020, the company has launched an online EV marketplace offering top brands of E-cycles and E-scooters. Brands like Hero Electric, Ampere, Hero Lectro, Go Zero and Lightspeed are available on the BLive Store. It recently started an exchange and upgrade Program that is aimed to promote the adoption of electric vehicles. Two-wheeler petrol vehicle owners can exchange their existing fuel-dependent two-wheelers and upgrade to a new electric vehicle. The EV Store has already successfully delivered to customers in over 25 cities in less than 3 months of online store launch, the company shared.
"With India's potential to be the next EV market leader of the world, we want to ensure that we support startups like BLive, who provides a completely unique way to users of experiencing and owning two-wheeler EVs. Boost in domestic travel and growth in EV category presents BLive a great opportunity to grow and expand to bigger markets," added Shanti Mohan, founder, LetsVenture.
BLive EV Tours has expanded to the top 15 cities across 9 states in India and has completed over 10000 e-bike tours so far. Driven by the increase in domestic tourism post-pandemic, the platform has seen a threefold growth in its e-bike tours.
The company is the official EV tourism partner of Goa Tourism and has partnered with hospitality partners like – Club Mahindra, Taj Hotels, Grand Hyatt, Airbnb, among others.
