Self-drive car rental start-up Zoomcar India targets to grow its monthly revenue four times by December to Rs 80 crore on the back of the expansion of its fleet across the country.
"We are looking at a 4X growth towards the end of this calendar year on a monthly basis. We will expand our supply and are targeting about 12,000 cabs by December," Greg Moran, founder of Zoomcar told Moneycontrol in an interaction.
According to multiple media reports, Zoomcar has been in talks with multiple investors, including automobile firm Mahindra & Mahindra besides existing investor Ford Smart Mobility to raise USD 50 million.
Moran, however, denied that the company was in talks to raise funds. He added that Zoomcar was making money on a city basis and did not need another round of fundraising for an immediate expansion. The company has its business across 30 cities in India.
The company has so far raised USD 45 million from Ford, Sequoia Capital, Empire Angels, Nokia Growth Partners, among others.
A fully owned subsidiary of US-based Zoomcar Inc, Moran launched the company in 2014 along with David Back - his friend from the University of Pennsylvania. The company offers users cars for self-driving on rent. It doesn't own the inventory but aggregates cabs.
However, according to Moran, who hails from the US, doing business in India has not been an easy task.
"The regulatory environment is very challenging for our business. The process of registration of cars is really painstaking and tedious... that's what we are focused on streamlining. So most of our energy and investment time and money goes into rectifying those processes," he said.
The company that currently has around 3,000 cars claims that India as a market has an appetite for at least one lakh cars for self-driving purpose.
"You look at countries such as the US and China .. all these countries have lakhs and lakhs of self-drive cabs. Even if you cut that number by 90 percent you still have the potential for a lot of cars in India. In fact, India is inherently a better market for self-drive cars because it is something where you share the car as supposed to own it," he said.
"You have affordability issues in India. Automotives are one of the most expensive goods than anywhere else in the world. Finance wise, India has exorbitantly high interest. You have an extremely inhospitable environment for ownership in India," he added.
While he declined to share the number of rides Zoomcar was doing on a daily basis, he said that the average ticket size would range between Rs 5,000-7,000 for approximately a day and a half.
In India, intra-city ride market is dominated by heavily funded cab aggregators Ola and Uber that transports customers from one point to another. And a self-drive car rental service is mostly limited to leisure rides within or outside the city.
Moran denies that Zoomcar gets a direct competition from Ola and Uber adding that Zoomcar is much affordable than cab aggregates.
"We are significantly cheaper than Ola and Uber. We obviously don't have a driver. It is not anyway comparative at all. Our service is more convenient. And people who value privacy than having a driver, prefer us," he said.
The self-drive car rental segment also has about 20 odd startups including JustRide and Revv, among others. However, Zoomcar claims to be having over 70 percent market share.
Last month, Zoomcar also launched PEDL, a technology-enabled cycle sharing service. It expects the segment to contribute a significant percentage of its revenue in 2018.
"Over time the revenue coming from this segment will certainly become significant. The cars will still be a majority of the revenue because generally, the average ticket size is much larger, still cycle would form a very significant portion... double digit by the end of this financial year," he said.
Zoomcar also has international expansion plans and plans to cover South East Asia, to begin with.
"We will be in Indonesia, the Philippines all these countries in South East Asia, over the next year .. those markets are very strong they don't have any player," he said, declining to share the investment details
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