Big Idea: The traffic problem

How a simple answer to the problem of moving people through congested cities evolved into an electric mobility business

October 4, 2026 18:56 IST

Amit Gupta Co-founder and CEO of Yulu

Amit Gupta had planned to stop working at 40. By then, he had co-founded InMobi and helped build it into India’s first venture-funded new-age unicorn, valued at just over $1 billion in 2011. He had little reason to start over. Yet an increasingly frustrating commute in Bengaluru changed that plan.

InMobi’s office on the Outer Ring Road was about 3 km from Gupta’s home. What initially took less than 10 minutes began taking half an hour and eventually an hour as traffic worsened. “I thought this menace of traffic will only get worse,” he says. The problem was simple: how do you move people over short distances in a city where the roads were becoming the bottleneck?

“I knew I wanted to solve this problem and give it a shot before I turn 50 or 60 and regret that I didn’t try,” Gupta says.

The idea was not built alone. Gupta called his IIT Kanpur classmate Naveen Dachuri, who was then working on data systems for the US aviation regulator. Dachuri returned to Bengaluru. The third co-founder was RK Misra, an IIT Kanpur alumnus who had founded the Tenet group of technology companies and Traveljini.com, one of India’s early travel portals. Misra had left business at 40 to work in public policy, advising central and state governments.

Their answer was Yulu, launched in early 2018 with a relatively simple proposition: rent a bicycle for short urban commutes. Users could scan a QR code, pick up a cycle and drop it at another location. But within six months, the founders realised the idea was not going to scale. “People were using those pedal cycles more for fitness and leisure, rather than the daily commute,” Gupta says.

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By mid-2018, Yulu changed direction. It shifted to low-speed electric bikes capped at 25 km/h. The vehicles were slow enough to be treated as bicycles under the rules then in force, avoiding the need for a driving licence or registration. More importantly, they found a use case that pedal cycles had not.

Then came Covid. Offices shut, commuters disappeared and Yulu’s revenue fell to zero. But another market was emerging at the same time: food delivery and quick commerce. The company had vehicles sitting idle and a growing pool of delivery workers looking for affordable mobility.

“We thought why don’t we offer our bikes to these riders on a fixed rental. Anyway our assets were sitting idle,” Gupta says.

The pivot changed Yulu’s economics. Gig workers took to the vehicles, investors followed and the company began building a business around electric mobility for commercial riders as much as commuters. In June 2020, Rocketship led a $3.9 million funding round. That year, Anuj Tewari, Gupta’s schoolmate from Kanpur, joined as chief financial officer. He was elevated to co-founder by late 2023. Bajaj invested in 2021, while Magna International led an $83 million Series B in September 2022 that valued Yulu at $181 million. Magna and Bajaj invested another $19.25 million in February 2024.

In August, Yulu raised $93 million, comprising $63 million in equity led by GEF Capital Partners and $30 million in debt. Overall, the company has raised about $198 million in equity and $49 million in debt, according to Tracxn. Its revenue doubled to `241.9 crore in FY25 from `122.8 crore in FY24, while its loss narrowed to `126 crore from `142.8 crore.

Bajaj now manufactures Yulu’s vehicles, which are in their third generation. The fleet is around 50,000, comprising the Miracle for commuters, the DeX for delivery riders and the Yulu Express, a two-seater. About 2,500 are Miracles and 700-800 are Express vehicles, with the rest being DeX.