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Rapido Founder, Pavan Guntupalli Was Rejected 75 Times, now Built a 6700 Cr. Company

By Viestories
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Prior to Rapido, Pavan Guntupalli failed in 7 startups, and now built Rs 6700 Cr worth of company, creating 60 lakhs jobs.

Pavan Guntupalli's inspiring journey

Meet the man, Pavan Guntupalli, who always wanted to do something of his own. This man is from a farming family. Pavan failed in 7 startups and was rejected 75 times. However, Pavan's most useful approach during his difficult times was to "Never step back." With this determination, Pavan has generated almost 60 lakh jobs in 8 years, and every month they generate 1.5 lakh new jobs.

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About Pavan Guntupalli

Pavan is a brilliant entrepreneur from Telangana who started learning computer programming and trading at an early age. He completed electrical engineering at IIT Kharagpur. After completing his studies, he started working in a Samsung company. He was always filled with a great desire to accomplish something more.

Pavan overcame several challenges and became a successful businessman due to his enduring resilience, dedication, and determination. Pavan and his friend Arvind Sanka established "the Karrier," a business that operated using minitrucks in order to provide interstate logistics services. Sadly, this startup failed. Pavan says that before launching Rapido, his 7 startups failed.

What inspired Pavan to launch Rapido?

Pavan persisted and examined the situation, concluding that in order to make money for the company, they needed to reduce expenses and interact directly with customers. He noticed that large startups such as Uber and Ola only offer their services in major cities and on four-wheelers, while India's inner cities still have a lot of problems.

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Furthermore, he discovered that approximately 20 crore bikes exist in India, not only in large cities but also in smaller ones. This sparked an idea in his mind. Finally, in order to address this intra-city commuting problem, Rapido was born.

What is Rapido?

Pavan Guntupalli, Rishikesh SR, and Aravind Sanka founded the Bengaluru-based bike taxi app Rapido in 2015 to address India's intra-city commuting issues.

  • With over 25 million app downloads, Rapido has become the largest bike-taxi app.
  • In 8 years, it has created 60 lakh jobs.
  • Each month, it creates 1.5 lakh new jobs.
  • There are almost 50,000 captains in more than 100 cities.

In Bangalore, Pavan launched the Rapido, which has a base rate of Rs 15 and charges Rs 3 for each extra km. But again, Pavan faced challenges. Investors rejected Rapido 75 times because Uber and Ola were already well-established in the ride-hailing market and also launched bike taxis. Despite this challenge, Pavan continued working to make Rapido a success and finally found the first investor, Pavan Munjal, Hero MotoCorp's Chairman and Managing Director.

Pavan says, “Problems and challenges are like doors, welcoming us to explore ourselves, test our limits, and push our boundaries. If you’re crazy enough to dream that you can change the world and confident enough to execute the strategies, then you can turn those dreams into reality.”

Despite so many failures, Pavan built an empire worth Rs 6700 crore. 

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