Bangalore, December 29, 2023: In the age of digitisation, India has grown massively in 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-19 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 & 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.
Bangalore, 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 include a mix of Hatchback, SUV & Sedan – Swift, Triber, Ertiga, i10 & Tiago. Each city has its preferred car models too such 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 kilometers traveled.
- 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 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 of 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 fascinating 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.