Bike rental startup Tilt raises $125,000 from Y Combinator

Amritsar, NFA Post: Bike-sharing startup Tilt, which focuses on solving mobility within campuses, has raised $125,000 from American seed money startup accelerator Y Combinator.

The Bengaluru-based startup has also raised an undisclosed amount from a set of angel investors.

Founded in 2018, the startup has deployed its solutions with major companies including Tata Motors, Tata Consultancy Services, ONGC Petro – additions Ltd, Palava City, Tata Steel, and Mahindra Group.

According to Tilt’s co-founder Deepak V.S., getting around campuses is painful, as one has to either walk long distances or wait for overcrowded shuttle buses. Tilt partners with such campuses to deploy e-bikes and bicycles within their communities.

Besides campuses, the startup also offers solutions for ease of mobility at manufacturing plants.

Tilt was incubated at Digital Impact Square, a TCS Foundation-run startup incubator. Through the incubator Tilt was introduced to Tata Motors, and after running a successful early pilot within their campus, Tata Motors became a paying customer.

Tilt, which has its manufacturing units in Nashik and Ludhiana, has developed its docking hardware in-house. Patent for the hardware, however is pending.

“Today, we have more contracts than we can fulfill with most of our demand coming from Tier II and III cities. Scaling manufacturing and operations to meet this demand is going to be our biggest short-term challenge. As we scale, our goal is to grow Tilt into a product that is synonymous with campus mobility,” Deepak said.

Tilt’s services are currently operated on fee-based monetisation model, in which the startup charges a fee for the duration of one’s ride.

Some campuses, however, have chosen to subsidise a part of the fee for its employees and residents.

Consumers who want to use Tilt’s services can simply download their app through Android play store or iOS app store, sign up, and find the nearest bike station within their campus and take their ride.

Tilt claims that over the last 18 months, the founding team has visited hundreds of campuses across the country to understand the unique mobility challenges that they face.

Tilt’s hardware, operations, software and vehicles have been built ground up to specifically address these challenges, according to the company.