Rapido bags $240 million in fresh funding

Rapido is no longer just the bike taxi app you open when cabs get too expensive.

What’s brewing: the company has bagged $240 million in fresh funding led by Prosus, with investors like WestBridge Capital and Accel also participating. This round is part of a much larger $730 million deal that values Rapido at around $3 billion.

And that says a lot about where India’s ride-hailing market is headed.

For years, Ola and Uber dominated the conversation. But Rapido slowly built a completely different playbook and it’s now paying off.

Instead of focusing heavily on cars, Rapido doubled down on bikes. That turned out to be a smart move in a country where affordability, traffic and quick travel matter more than luxury rides for millions of users.

Bikes are cheaper to run, easier to maintain and allow drivers to join the platform faster. That helped Rapido scale rapidly without burning massive amounts of cash like traditional ride-hailing companies.

Another surprisingly effective move?

Calling drivers ‘Captains’ instead of drivers. It may sound small, but it helped create a stronger sense of partnership and loyalty.

Some numbers: today, Rapido controls more than 60% of India’s bike taxi market, a category it practically created. 

By early 2025, Rapido had already crossed the combined monthly active users of Ola and Uber in India. The platform touched around 74 million users by early 2026, compared to Uber’s 39 million and Ola’s 28 million.

Now, Rapido wants to use the fresh funding to improve connectivity, expand into high-growth regions and make its platform even more efficient.