The gig economy has reached Brazil, on motorcycles.
Mottubills itself as a motorcycle rental company. What it really is, though, is a courier-based delivery company with gig workers. Those workers can contact Mottu, get rider training, rent a motorcycle and become a moto courier in Brazil. These are not rental motorcycles for tourists. They’re a logistics and last-mile transportation solution.
It Rarely Snows In Brazil
What may not work so well in more developed cities (or countries that get a lot of snow) seems to be working out quite well in Brazil. The Sao Paolo based startup has secured $30 million in equity in a second round of funding.
Rubens Zanelatto founded the company in 2020 with a fleet of 200 motorcycles. Now the CEO, he brought the company from $2 million in annual recurring revenue to $10 million in a year. Currently Mottu operates out of Sao Paulo with a fleet of 10,000 rental motorcycles. Zanelatto plans to end 2023 by growing his fleet to 50,000 motorcycles.
How It Works
The company rents small, inexpensive motorcycles to people who want to work but have bad credit or no credit, which means they have no way to purchase a vehicle. Some of the customers rent and work as independent couriers. Others rent a motorcycle and work for Mottu, making deliveries through the self-branded smartphone app.
The bikes cost what equates to about $150 USD per month, and that includes roadside assistance, preventive maintenance, and help in case of an accident.
From the CEO
In an interview with TechCrunch, Zanelatto said “Our customers are unemployed people with very bad credit score ratings. Those people can’t go to a dealer store and buy or lease a motorcycle to work as a courier. And we solve all the bottlenecks that couriers have in their working journey. We are trying to get our business model to be a no-brainer decision for a courier.”
The CEO jokes that the company offers the motorcycles in a “Hardware-as-a-service” model for people who want to be in the workforce but need a leg up to do so.
The branded motorcycles offer the couriers’ customers some comfort that this is a valid courier and not someone posing as a courier to do crime, which is a problem in Brazil.
For deliveries in Brazil. Mottu is solving the “last mile” problem. It’s also creating employment for folks who might otherwise not be able to find any. All that said, you’d think folks would rent these bikes and abscond with them, but that’s not the case. Everyone who uses the model seems happy with it, and Zanelatto claims a “zero delinquency” rate. A cheap rental service that includes regular maintenance and roadside assistance proves too valuable to ruin with theft, apparently.
