In this tech-savvy era, you don’t need to worry about mileage, fuel expenses, insurance, or automobile failures as Zoomcar’s self-drive cars have given the customers greater autonomy, privacy, and independence. With the app on your phone, you can book a self-drive automobile in each city you visit and feel at home wherever you go.
Founded by Greg Maron and David Greg, Zoomcar has made driving more convenient for travelers around the country and is rapidly increasing its reach into cities.
In this blog, we will take you through the entire journey of Zoomcar and understand how did its founders manage to achieve such a massive success in India.
How Did It Begin?
Zoomcar was founded by two Americans – Greg Maron and David Back, who met each other while they were pursuing a business degree at USC Marshall School of Business. After completing his graduation, Greg started working in finance at a company that had its operations in India.
While working in an investment bank’s clean technology and infrastructure disciplines, Greg realized there was a first-hand opportunity for environmentally sustainable solutions in India.
As an analyst, he had some idea about the Indian market and always felt a void in the car rental space in the country. So, he decided to move to Bangalore to start his own business venture. In 2013, with the help of his friends, Greg launched Zoomcar – the first personal mobility platform in India. Since the startup did not have enough funds to buy offices and cars back then, the founders approached local vendors with a taxi fleet and onboarded them on their platform at the initial stage.
Obstacles In The Road
Despite its intriguing journey of success, Zoomcar has had its ups and downs. During its initial phase, the company had to face stiff competition from traditional car rental companies and other emerging startups in the same field. In addition to this, the superfluous use of technology in the car rental market in India made the situation worse for Zoomcar founders as the platform became an easy target for hackers.
It was evident when the personal data of over 100,000 customers was leaked online in 2016. Nevertheless, in spite of all the obstacles on the road, the company managed to reach the pinnacle of success. With a fleet of more than 10,000 cars running in 50+ cities, Zoomcar is defying the odds. The platform has already captured around 75% of the car rental space in India.
Reason Behind The Success Of Zoomcar
When Greg and David started Zoomcar, all they were thinking about was effective mobility and transportation solutions for Indians. For this, the American duo analyzed the Indian market carefully and found out that car ownership levels were incredibly low at 2% or 3%.
One more important factor that came to their notice was that the Indian car rental space could be fuelled by the growing young population. An average youngster, nowadays, doesn’t want to own a car because it is too much of a hassle to maintain it.
As a matter of fact, some people couldn’t even afford a car in India, while many think that the money could be used elsewhere. After all, it would be convenient and cheap to share a cab or a ride to work. So, here the question arises: what if the person wants to go on a road trip or a vacation? Without a rental car, the only other option would be to borrow a car from a friend or a less trustworthy car dealer.
Zoomcar founders caught the smell of this in 2012, and the rest is history. David and Greg conceptualized Zoomcar as an hourly car rental platform. With their unique business model and strong mindset, the two men have achieved a lot in a very short span of time.