Zoomcar in talks with EV car OEMs and dealers to assist hosts with vehicle ownership

Greg-Moran, CEO-&-Co-founder, Zoomcar

Zoomcar is engaging with multiple electric original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and large dealers to help and assist its hosts on the platform to transition and purchase electric vehicles, the car-rental marketplace's cofounder and CEO Greg Moran told Moneycontrol.

“We have already announced a couple of partnerships, one is with SparkCars, and more upstream partnerships are also planned…We are also speaking with OEMs and large dealers. However, we don’t want to deploy any capital towards that or spend a large capex as we are an asset-light model, we will just assist our hosts to buy it from these OEMs,” Moran told Moneycontrol in an interaction.

In February, Zoomcar announced its partnership with electric vehicles self-drive rental firm SparkCars with a plan to introduce over 1,000 EVs on its platform across India within the next two years.

Presently, the platform has less than five percent of EV cars on its platform, owned by its hosts. Some of the prominent EV car manufacturers include Tata Motors and Mahindra in India.

Moran said he expects net revenue to touch around $20 million for the calendar year ended December 31, 2024, representing an increase of approximately 100 percent compared to calendar year 2023.

The company also expects to achieve an annualized adjusted EBITDA run rate between $2.0 million and $4.0 million in calendar Q4 2024.

“As we continue to work towards calendar year 2024, we are planning to grow 2X from $10 million to around $20 million and this is very much achievable. Along those lines we also see a visibility of free cash flow and Ebitda positive by the end of this year,” Moran said.

During the third fiscal or December quarter of 2023, the firm’s net revenue decreased 19 percent to $2.4 million, compared to $3.0 million in the same period last year.

The decrease in revenue was primarily due to a lower number of days booked, resulting in decreased gross billings as the company prioritized higher-margin bookings in support of its cost reduction efforts.

The firm is doubling down on its supply side or the host business through value-added services by tying up with Cars24, Spinny, and Droom to help hosts build more supply.

“Supply-side is an important focus for us, it unlocks more opportunities. We have been focussed on solving for how to provide more enhanced ecosystem for our current hosts and grow their collective vehicle listing numbers on the platform from one car to more than three cars and eventually ten cars,” Moran said.

The firm is also working on introducing new hosts into the platform.

“Any marketplace should look at boosting supply and that is exactly what we are doing. The largest value proposition for our end customers is to have integrated supply and that is exactly where we are working now,” Moran told.

Zoomcar was founded in 2013 by Moran, who is now chief executive officer, and David Back, who is no longer with the company.

Headquartered in Bengaluru, Zoomcar is a marketplace for car sharing focused on emerging markets. The Zoomcar community connects Hosts with guests, who choose from a selection of cars for use across India, Egypt and Indonesia.

In 2023, Zoomcar completed its merger with blank-check company Innovative International Acquisition CorpM (IOAC) through a SPAC deal and was listed on the Nasdaq.

As per reports, the merger with the special purpose acquisition company implies a pro forma enterprise value of about $456 million for the business.