The world’s third-largest motorcycle company, Bajaj Auto Limited, has announced that it has invested USD 8 million in the Bengaluru-based bicycle and electric scooter rental startup Yulu.

The micro-mobility startup -Yulu offers electric cycles and bicycles on hire. Yulu had been in talks with the company for raising the funding from the past few months and the investment is expected to go up to USD 15-20 million.

As per the deal, the motorcycle company will customize the e-bike manufactured by Yulu and will also offer vehicle finance with its financial services company — Bajaj Finserv.

With this fresh round of funding, Yulu aims to increase its fleet size to unto 1,00,000 e-bikes by December 2020.

The companies in a joint statement said, “Bajaj Auto Ltd is investing USD 8 million in Yulu, to compliment this strategic relationship. Yulu will source from Bajaj electric two-wheelers which have been co-designed and manufactured exclusively for shared micro-mobility. Bajaj will also consider facilitating the vehicle finance needs of Yulu for a large scale deployment of its micro-mobility electric vehicles.”

Yulu was founded by Amit Gupta, ex-InMobi founder, and R. K. Misra. Since its launch, it has expanded into cities like Mumbai, Pune, Bhubaneswar, and Delhi.

Commenting on this new development, Rajiv Bajaj, Managing Director, Bajaj Auto said, “At BAL (Bajaj Auto Ltd), we believe that the two factors of congestion reduction and pollution control will drive the segment of shared micro-mobility in the future. That coupled with the expansion of Mass Rapid Transport System like Metro in large cities will further boost the demand for flexible last-mile connectivity. In Yulu we find an experienced and committed partner with the robust achievement of success metrics in a very short time. And this is why we decided to partner with them in their journey of bringing Yulu service to every neighborhood of Urban India.”