Delivery workers can rent e-bikes from this new service in Philly

Delivery drivers that bike around Philadelphia dropping off food orders to customers will soon have a new way to access a bike.

Whizz, a company that rents e-bikes to delivery workers, is expanding to Philadelphia. The business, which launched in 2022 and currently has about 2,500 bikes in New York, will open its Philadelphia outpost on Monday at 308 Market St. The location will serve as an office with around six workers initially and a store for its bikes.

“We could probably grow only in New York for the next, I don’t know, three years or something, [but] you just see the demand from other places, and Philadelphia is one of them,” Mike Peregudov, the company’s CEO and cofounder, said in an interview this week. “We feel it very natural to move to make [the] next step in Philadelphia.”

The company raised $12 million in June, according to TechCrunch, to build more bikes and expand to other cities. The company previously raised $3.4 million in 2023, according to Forbes.

Electric bikes, which have a battery and an electric motor, can cost a couple thousand dollars and are expensive to buy for the delivery drivers to whom Whizz supplies bikes, he says. Most of the company’s customers are immigrants, hailing from Latin America and Africa.

“They just don’t have this amount of money. They don’t have access to credit, so they’re just not able to start working in a delivery space,” Peregudov said. “Our mission was to provide them with [an] affordable and safe option to start this career in the delivery space, and that’s why we decided not to sell bikes, but to rent them out.”

With Whizz, there is no docking station, customers can rent a bike online, then pick it up at a company hub or have it delivered, and pay a monthly subscription for using it. If they experience damage from wear-and-tear use, the company can fix it at no extra cost to them.

Rentals cost between $159 and $259 a month and can come with a backpack, helmet, lock, and extra battery, according to the company’s website.

In comparison, Indego, which introduced e-bikes in Philadelphia in 2018, offers a $20 monthly pass that allows customers to have access to an unlimited amount of 60-minute rides on a traditional bike, according to the service’s website. An extra 20 cents per minute is added on for the use of an e-bike.

Whizz has a different business model from bike-sharing programs such as Indego or New York City’s Citi Bike, which have bike docking stations and rent out bikes based on time. Peregudov’s customers are on average using their bikes 8 hours per day and logging 600 miles per month.

Given the high cost of the bike, potential customers are required to go through a screening process in order to be approved to rent a bike, which includes a background check. For those who don’t pass the screening, Whizz also sells bikes, both used and new, which can cost up to $1,490, according to the company’s website.

To address potential lost or stolen bikes, the company has a dedicated team tasked with retrieving them. Whizz uses a tracking system that allows them to see where the bikes are, and they can remotely lock the wheels and set off an alarm, if necessary.

When e-bikes became popular in New York some four years ago, the market was flooded with low-quality batteries that appeared to cause fires or explode, said Peregudov, who noted their company’s batteries are safe and have not had any fires.

Whizz has four “rider hubs” in New York, one in New Jersey, and the one opening in Philadelphia. It also has a warehouse in New Jersey.

The company offers customer support in several languages. The most popular ones currently are French, followed by Spanish and then English.

“Our support and our offices use six languages, and English is not the most popular of them,” he said.