Info.: He's Co-founder at Chartered Bike, a bike self-driving bike rental service in Indore and Goa. he has done his B.Tech in Civil engineering from MANIT , Bhopal.
Q1. What is Chartered Bike ?
Chartered Bike is self ride bike rental application which provide an easy link between vendors and customers with an handy Android application,where vendor's bike are directly booked by customer for a day, week or month. The concept is very simple - We create a market place where people who want bikes (Travelers) can be matched with people who have bikes (Our Vendors). The participating bike shop could list there available inventory on our application that can be used by consumers to search, locate and reserve online.
Q2. How you got such an idea ?
It was back in June 2015 when I went to Delhi to meet my friends. There we planned to visit different locations and we had only one day for it. But the problem was which mode of transport to choose. If we had taken metro then no doubt we would have cover many places but travelling in metro with friends to enjoy was not a good idea. We chose to hire a cab, but it is a common knwoledge about the Delhi Traffic were one get stuck easily. However we were able to visit only india gate , redfort and akshardham temple out of 11 locations we had planned, which made us think that "kaash yaha bikes mil jati, mazaa aa jata" that was the first time the concept of bike rental came to our mind, but remained a passing thought. Later in the month of July I had a occasion to discuss this with my friend Devesh (Co-founder) and we both came up with a plan of bike rental service.
Q3. How it all started ? who all helped you out ? what is the story from ground level ?
But it's not always easy to start something in which you are not good in, me being a civil engineer working in oil field and my friend Devesh an electronics and communication engineer both of us are '0' in software and application developing. Than our search started to have a developer in our team whom we can trust but we didn't find anyone. Than one lucky day Devesh remember one of his teacher who was a developer himself, so we went to him with our plan. He liked our idea and we got him as a developer in our team. But now there were more problems like where to start it from ? How to get vendors ? How to get goverment approval ? But later we were able to complete each each of this point very effectively. And finally on 22nd December 2015 our application was launched in Goa. And we started getting pretty good response. Better than what we thought.
Q4. Details on when Chartered bike started , what services currently you provide and where ., who are the co-founders.
Chartered bike was put up on Playstore on 22nd December 2015 as a handy application to book bike on rent in Goa.
Later we also started our services for Indore on 23rd February 2016. We even got many exciting features like Chartered Bike Wallet, Chartered Bike cash back, discount coupons for first ride included in our application. We are now planning to soon make our application available on Apple store and also including many more cities. Services in Mumbai, Pondicherry, Cochin, Munnar, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Dehradun will be started very soon.
Rohan Jain - Co-founder
Devesh Molasaria - Co- founder
Gaurav Saxena - Website and Application Developer
Vinay Jain (HnCvj) - SMM , SMO , SEO , Blogger,Website Developer. ( Founder of Developer's Interview)
Q5. How Chartered Bike is gonna revolutionaries the way you rent bikes in Goa ?
When you go for Bike rental service in Goa, the most common problem faced by customers is "OUT OF STOCK" due to limited quantities on shop. Chartered Bike ensures an item is specifically for you and of your choice. It's obvious when you go for any trip you don't want to make compromises on your choices. And we make sure that users gets bike of his choice at most appropriate price. Chartered bike not only help customers to get their choice bike but also our vendors to get better business. There are some vendors in Goa who doesn't have their shops in tourist area, so they can give their inventory to us and so we can provide them booking.
Q6. What were the major roadblocks in this kind of startup ? and how you tackled them ?
Initially it wasn't easy to get the exact application and website as we wished. It took lot of time to polish our application to make it as user friendly as we can. Now we have our product. However we are still working on it to make it the best we can.
And the other problem was to connect customers with appropriate vendor which is close to his location and can provide exactly same service that our customer want.
At the end of the day, what makes us feel good is the feedback from our users that they really enjoyed the services.
Q7. Did you required any initial funding ? If so, how much ?
No , we've not taken funding yet. It's a self funded startup.
Q8. What was the toughest phase for Chartered Bike ? How you passed it ?
After application and website got published what we need was good marketing strategy and a team. This was very tough time because we both got busy with our job and was very difficult for us to focus on our start-up. Than I ask my brother who is studying to help me in my marketing. He started helping us but again he alone can't do everything so again we were looking for someone who would helped us in SEO and SMO and we got Vinay Jain.(HnCvj).
Q9. What do you think , is running your startup part-time to secure your job ok ?
No I don't think so. But what we've invested on Chartered Bike is the time and some money and that every single penny since day one till this moment had been spent from our job which we don't like. There was a quote I've read somewhere, "For every single beer I drink, there's a job which I hate the most." However its not that bad, I do like working :P. But at last it's our job which is making our dream into reality. So for the time being we find our job a good mode of security as well as our funding for chartered Bike.
Links to reach :
CharteredBike Website
CharteredBike Blog
