In the age of digitisation, India has grown massively when it comes to finding convenience and mobility with the help of apps. A recent report on the self-drive car rental industry published by Zoomcar, a leading marketplace for car sharing in emerging markets, revealed that India has grown over 3x in the last 5 years despite the COVID outbreak in 2019 and its prolonged impact until 2021.
The report delves into the changing mindset of consumers who now seek more control over their travel experiences and are increasingly opting for the convenience, freedom & privacy offered by self-drive cars. In 2023, 4 out of every 100 people in the country who know how to drive a car preferred to rent one over other modes of transport and a record 84% of people had a 4+ star experience when renting from Zoomcar.
Bengaluru, Delhi & Mumbai emerged to be the top cities where people are fully embracing the idea of renting a car to self-drive over a cab or even possibly buying a car themselves. Furthermore, the report highlights that Indians love variety as the top 5 cars booked most in 2023 includes a mix of Hatchback, SUV & Sedan - Swift, Triber, Ertiga, i10 & Tiago. Each city has its own preferred car models too as Mumbai loves to drive a Baleno, Delhi prefers a Fortuner and Goa majorly booked a Thar.
Some more interesting facts:
- India took 145 round trips to Mars in terms of kilometres travelled.
- The city of startups – Bengaluru self-drives the most
- A Hyderabad user drove 17 different cars spending only 2.4L in 2023.
- A Bengaluru man earned over 41Lakhs in just one year by hosting his car on Zoomcar.
- Another Bengaluru user has booked a car 944 times in the last 10 years.
The data also indicates a notable boom of over INR 150 Cr in earnings in just 1 year by local hosts who share their own cars (Zoomcar went asset-light and switched to a peer-to-peer marketplace model in 2021). This spike in income for hosts is expected to continue in 2024 as 5 new cars get listed almost every hour!
Speaking on the findings Greg Moran, CEO and Co-Founder Zoomcar says, “It’s been over a decade of building & helping India find the most trusted self-drive car for a convenient & flexible travel experience and we are excited to share some very interesting facts and learnings on India’s growth in this industry. We were pleasantly surprised to see some of this mind-blowing data that further instils our passion to continue raising the bar and provide a quality experience with every booking, as we stand at the cusp of our IPO.”
Zoomcar had recently announced their plans to go public with a NASDAQ listing via a merger with a blank-check firm Innovative International Acquisition Corp earlier in Oct’23.
