Summary:
Extending its service across India, the Ahmedabad-based ‘MyByk’, the bicycle sharing and renting start-up, is set to begin operations along the Kochi Metro route in Kerala from March 1.
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Extending its service across India, the Ahmedabad-based ‘MyByk’, the bicycle sharing and renting start-up, is set to begin operations along the Kochi Metro route in Kerala from March 1.
“We have won a tender with Kochi Metro.
We will be inaugurating the project in Kochi with 1,000 bicycles on March 1.
They are giving us a capital subsidy of Rs 1 crore,” said Arjit Soni, founder of the MyByk project that is managed by Greenpedia Bike Share Private Limited.
“We are starting out with 60 bicycle stations in Kochi.
Of these, 22 will cover the metro route, while the remaining will be secondary stations that will help commuters use bicycles on an hourly basis or for short transits,” Soni said.
The Ahmedabad-based firm currently operates more than 5,500 bicycles in total, 3,000 of which are in Ahmedabad.
It operates 200 bicycles as a pilot project with Mumbai Metro and is currently managing 250 bicycles centred around Fatehsagar lake in Udaipur, Rajasthan.
The firm began its services by providing bicycles on rent to commuters of the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) in Ahmedabad.
The idea to begin a bicycle-sharing start-up came from Soni’s commuting experiences in Mumbai during 2007-’10, when Ahmedabad cycle renting start-up to begin operations for Kochi Metro he used cycles to access local trains between Andheri and Dadar.