It took one pivot and five years for this EV startup founder to hit the sweet spot for business in India

• Delhi-based Akash Gupta started with solving last mile commute issues with his startup Mobycy.
• In November 2019, Gupta along with his co-founders Shivraj Singh and Rashi Agarwal, made the switch from B2C (business to consumer) to B2B (business to business) and rebranded the company to Zypp.
• Today, the company has partnered with clients like BigBasket, Spencer’s, Amazon, Flipkart, Licious, Myntra among others to serve their last mile deliveries.

In August 2017, Delhi-based Akash Gupta, who had worked with companies like Airtel, Snapdeal and Mobikwik, knew he wanted to work towards solving the pollution crisis. His research brought him to the area of electric vehicles (EVs), where he could see two ways to go about it – solve last mile commutes or delivery. He started with solving last mile commute issues with his startup Mobycy.

But two years later, Gupta realised that the Indian market wasn’t yet ready to adopt EVs completely and building the infrastructure would take time. “But last mile delivery was already happening, albeit on petrol and diesel vehicles,” he told Business Insider.

In November 2019, Gupta along with his co-founders Shivraj Singh and Rashi Agarwal, made the switch from B2C (business to consumer) to B2B (business to business) and rebranded the company to Zypp. “When we started focusing on last mile delivery, we realised that profitability is a sooner path and the problem could be solved faster,” he said.

Today, the company has partnered with clients like BigBasket, Spencer’s, Amazon, Flipkart, Licious, Myntra among others to serve their last mile deliveries through Zypp EVs and trained Zypp delivery executives.

“I feel it has more potential because to shift the consumer to an EV, you need to have the infrastructure right which will take time. But with businesses, you can go national with them, as they will see there is a cost saving mechanism there,” he said.

And the pivot worked well for Zypp, whose fleet size has grown four times in the last two years. “Frankly our revenue has grown eight times. We have onboarded more than 200 B2B customers and our vehicle utilisation has gone up from 60% to 85%. Demand is pretty sorted in the B2B market,” said Gupta.

The startup had last raised funds in November 2019 – ₹15 crore from Indian Angel Network. And now the startup is back in the search for funds.

While it’s present in Delhi NCR and Jaipur, the company now plans to soon expand to cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Pune.


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