This Dussehra (or Dasara), I found myself in Mysuru, Karnataka, with no uber/ola support and normal autos charging double or triple the usual fare because they could. My savior, a small mobility startup that has a strong presence in Mysuru, or at least I can vouch for the 5km radius around Mysore Palace - MyByk.
What drew me in was the availability. There was always a bike hub nearby and the prices were affordable. For example, I got an unlimited day pass for ₹85, that would get me a cycle for 24 hours. To my surprise, the cycles were electric, and saved me a lot of pedaling.
Unfortunately, I also witnessed their infrastructure crumbling. I saw a fleet of good cycles just standing in the hub, mistakenly marked as ‘bad’ by their system. On the other hand I saw punctured cycles marked as ‘good to go’ because the tech had no way to detect punctures. Nor did I see any obvious way to report the cycles as damaged.
The customer support was also bogged down by the sheer number of queries they were getting.
From a user perspective, I found three major issues with the whole experience:
The App
The app is incredibly slow. It must be making a lot of redundant REST calls in the background. The devs should work on caching, reducing the number of calls or moving to a faster protocol.
Another annoyance was that I couldn’t browse the app without turning bluetooth on if I have a bike already rented. I can think of many situations where I wouldn’t want to connect to the bike but still need to browse the app - for instance, finding the nearest hub. The app’s continuous pings to connect were quite frustrating.
The cherry on top was the notification tone, which sounds like a bicycle tring… which made me check my bike time to time because I thought somebody was taking it away.
The Cycle
Oh-My-God.
MyByk saved my wallet, but it couldn’t save my butt. The longest I might have cycled would be an hour, but the seat is so damn hard, my butt thanked me for ditching the bike and travelling the remaining distance on foot that day.
The cycles also desperately need a horn. That squeaky tring sound that it makes does not really register with people, and when you’re going 15km/hour, you need people ahead of you to hear you coming. I had to literally shout “side please!” most of the time.
The Battery
I’m not sure how do they calculate the remaining kilometers as a measure of battery charge in the bike. I remember picking up a bike with 20 Km charge, which dropped to 0 Kms after only 8-10 Km of cycling. As a consumer, I’m used to seeing battery life as a percentage instead of kms. A percentage would be more intuitive and less misleading than being promised 20 km and having the battery die after 10.
Conclusion
Overall, MyByk is a great, independent, and pocket-friendly alternative for local travel. However, the experience needs significant improvement. As it stands, what you save in money, you pay for in other ways. I am looking forward to their growth and improvements.