Technology

Two of Indiamost prominent VCs are backing a motorbike on-demand service after Sequoia India and Accel led a $12.2 million investment in Metro Bikes. Sequoia India and Accel were joined in the round byRaghunandan G, who founded TaxiForSure which sold to Ola, among other investors.

Metro Bikes started outas a luxury bike rental service in 2014 — initially as &Wicked Rides& — and it launched scooters (motorbikes) and other two-wheel rentals in 2016. Now, the company is rebranding to Bounce and refocusing its business to on-demand scooter (thatmotorbike in U.S. parlance) rentals for first and last mile transportation. The idea is to appeal to commuters, who can pick up a bike at their nearest location and later leave it at an endzone. The cost is based on distance and time spent.

Bounce is currently present in Bangalore, where it has 2,000 scooters currently, and Hyderabad, where it has around 500. The plan is to increase those numbers but the company is waiting on a permit to operate electric scooters, once it gets that it will only deploy electric, CEOVivekananda Hallekere told TechCrunch in an interview. Its current mix of vehicles also includes bicycles, electric bicycles and kick scooters available.

The startup is going to hone its focus on Bangalore and Hyderabad for now, with no new expansions for 6-10 months, he added. Looking further forward, Bounce is aiming to be nationwide by 2020, while Hallekere said he sees the potential for deployment in Southeast Asia in the future.

Bounce claims that it is currently seeing around four rides per vehicle per day on its on-demand platform, the company is targeting seven to twelve rides which it believes will bring it to a good level of revenue. Although Hallekere did stress that the core business is anchored in sustainability.

Thatdown to the funding of the fleet, which the CEO said is financed by institutional investors who purchase the assets in exchange for a cut of revenue. That helps cover a significant portion of operating expenses, while in other cases Bounce works with OEMs who provide vehicles under similar terms.

Bouncefounding team (left to right): Vivekananda H R, CEO; Varun Agni, CTO; Anil Giri Raju, COO

Bounce is entering a fairly congested market in India, with other startups include Wheelstreet — which TechCrunch wrote about earlier this year — ZipHop also competing with similar services. Hallekere, the Bounce CEO, said that the companyhistory in the business and its technology can help it stand out.

Added to that, Bounce said it is working closely with authorities to help ease last mile congestion. For example, the company is one of a number to have a struck a deal with Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL) to put rental bikes at 36 metro stations. It also landed adeal with corporate to enable parking across the city. The company said it plans to pursue similar arrangements with metro operators in Hyderabad and other cities when it expands.

&The first mile and last mile are essential to having public transport work in India,& Hallekere said. &Itvery natural for Indians to go on scooters and we started with metro bikes keeping this in mind. We want to make an impact and enable people to ditch cars.&

Bounce is also looking to introduce a pooling service that would enable scooter owners to add their vehicles to the companyfleet and make money when they are used.

Taxfix, the Berlin-based startup that has developed a mobile assistant to help you file your tax return, has closed $13 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Peter ThielValar Ventures, with participation from existing investors Creandum and Redalpine.

Launched in 2017, Taxfix is built on the premise that filing taxes remains a daunting task in most countries, involving a lot of archaic form filling, often carried out incorrectly and without the proper advice, and rarely optimised for tax refunds. As a result, the company says that in Germany alone, over 10 million employees decide not to file a tax return, and therefore forgo an average tax rebate of 935 Euros.

&The problem is that most people don&t have a personal tax accountant, nor the sufficient knowledge on how to file their taxes,& explains Taxfix co-founder and CEO Mathis Büchi. &Taxpayers are required to invest a substantial amount of time to become an expert themselves to receive their maximum tax refund. Thatwhy the rich can optimise their taxes with their own accountants and the regular citizens are overpaying billions of Euros in taxes every year in almost every country in the world&.

To help combat this, the Taxfix app works similar to a chatbot, and — coupled with the startup&tax-engine technology& — aims to make filing your taxes as easy as it would be if you hired your own tax accountant. You simply photograph your annual payslip and work through a questionnaire personally tailored to optimise your refund. The Taxfix app then automatically calculates the predicted tax rebate and submits your filing for you.

&[Taxflix creates] a digital tax accountant on the mobile phone, which asks the users simple questions and makes sure they optimise their refund and file their tax return correctly,& says Büchi.

To date, Taxfixtypical customers are young people between 20-35 years old, who are not tax experts and often have never filed a tax return before. For every tax return that generates a refund of over 50 Euros, the startup charges 35 Euros for submission to the relevant financial authorities.

Of course, there are already a large number of startups and software companies that can help you file a tax return. These include legacy players such as WISO in Germany and IntuitTurboTax in the U.S., or upstarts such as the U.K.TaxScouts. A governmentown online tax filing gateway could also be considered a direct competitor.

&Taxfix differentiates itself from all other solutions by its mobile-first approach and by not using forms fields as the user interface,& adds Büchi. &Taxfix creates a completely new user experience with the conversational interface that asks simple questions and translates the information into tax language automatically. It takes on average 20 minutes to file your taxes with Taxfix, compared to 3 to 6 hours with traditional software&.

Meanwhile, Büchi says the new funding will be used for international expansion, bringing the apptax declaration capabilities to other jurisdictions. The German company also plans to invest heavily in machine learning to bring its tax engine technology &to the next level&.

Walmart sold its China-based e-commerce business in 2016, but the U.S. retail giant is very much involved in the Chinese internet market through a partnership with e-commerce firm JD.com. Alibabamost serious rival, JD scooped up Walmart&sYihaodian business and offered its own online retail platform to help enable Walmart to products in China, both on and offline.

Now that relationship is developing further after Walmart and JD jointly invested $500 million intoDada-JD Daojia, an online-to-offline grocery business which is part owned by JD, according to a CNBC report.

Unlike most grocery delivery services, though, Dada-JD Daojia stands apart because it includes a crowdsourced element.

The business was formed following a merger betweenJD Daojia, JDplatform for order from supermarkets online which has 20 million monthly users, and Dada, which uses crowdsourcing to fulfill deliveries and counts 10 million daily deliveries.JD Daojia claims over 100,000 retail stores and its signature is one-hour deliveries for a range of products, which include fruit, vegetables and groceries.

Walmart is already part of the service — it has 200 stores across 30 Chinese cities on the Dada-JD Daojia service; as well as five online stores on the core JD.com platform — and now it is getting into the business itself via this investment.

JD.com said the deal is part of its ‘Borderless Retail& strategy, which includes staff-less stores and retail outlets that mix e-commerce with physical sales.

&The future of global retail is boundaryless. There will be no separation betweenonline and offline shopping, only greater convenience, quality and selection toconsumers. JD was an earlyinvestor in Dada-JD Daojia, and continues its support, because we believe that itsinnovations will be an important part of realizing that vision,& said Jianwen Liao, Chief Strategy Officer of JD.com, in a statement.

Alibaba, of course, has a similar hybrid strategy with its Hema stores and food delivery service Ele.me, all of which links up with its Taobao and T-Mall online shopping platforms. The company recently scored a major coup when it landed a tie-in with Starbucks, which is looking to rediscover growth in China through an alliance that will see Ele.me deliver coffee to customers and make use of Hema stores.

Away from the new retail experience, JD.com has been doing more to expand its overseas presence lately.

The company landed a $550 million investment from Google this summer which will see theduo team up to offer JD.com products for sale on the Google Shopping platform across the world. Separately, JD.com has voiced intention to expand into Europe, starting in Germany, and thatwhere theGoogle deal and a relationshipwith Walmart could be hugely helpful.

Another strategic JD investor is Tencent, and that relationship has helped the e-commerce firm sell direct to customers through TencentWeChat app, which is Chinamost popular messaging service. Tencent and JD have co-invested in a range of companies in China, such as discount marketplace Vipshop and retail group Better Life. Their collaboration has also extended to Southeast Asia, where they are both investors in ride-hailing unicorn Go-Jek, which is aiming to rival Grab, the startup that bought out Uberlocal business.