IITian Faced 75 Rejections But Went On To Build A Billion-Dollar Empire. His Company Is...
An IITian who faced 75 rejections in securing financial backing for his startup idea, today owns multibillion-dollar company.
Success stories of various IIT graduates come to the fore, about them working in top multinational companies. However, one success story of building a brand value worth 6,700 crore within a decade has inspired numerous youths.
One such example is that of Pavan Guntupalli, who co-founded the bike-taxi platform Rapido.
Once finding financial backing for his innovative idea, Guntupalli's Rapido now operates in over 100 cities in the country and has crossed 5 crore app downloads.
Who Is Pavan Guntupalli?
He hails from Telangana and cleared the highly competitive IIT-JEE exam and pursued BTech from IIT Kharagpur. After his graduation, he started his career at Samsung. He went on to become co-founder of 'theKarrier", a logistics startup, with his friend.
However, he got a setback when his startup did not succeed and was shut down.
Not discouraged by this failure, Guntupalli started Rapido, a bike-taxi service meant to offer affordable and easy travel options like bike rides and auto-rickshaws for people who needed quick and low-cost transport. But getting investors to support the idea was very difficult. Pavan faced many rejections — 75 investors turned him down, doubting whether Rapido could stand up to big companies like Uber and Ola.
What Turned Things Around For Guntupalli?
Pavan Munjal, Chairman of Hero MotoCorp, saw potential in the IITian's vision and extended financial backing to Rapido, further paving the way for other investors. This resulted in the official launch of Rapido in 2016.
Unlike Ola and Uber, which mainly focused on big cities in India, Rapido took a different approach. Pavan and his team targeted tier 1 and tier 2 cities, where daily travel problems were common. In the beginning, Rapido offered a low pricing model — a base fare of Rs 15 and Rs 3 per kilometer — which made it affordable but hard to make profits.
Despite challenges, Rapido grew steadily. Today, it operates in over 100 cities across India. The Rapido app has around 7 lakh active users and a team of 50,000 riders, whom the company calls 'captains."
Rapido is currently valued at a strong Rs 6,700 crore. Swiggy, the popular food delivery company, is one of its major investors. Rapido now earns over Rs 1,370 crore in annual revenue.
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First Published:
July 13, 2025, 15:08 IST
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