Working in a car rental company may not have been even a borderline choice for many of us in the past. But the way the industry has been shaping up for last few years and the speed at which new businesses are emerging every other day is really amazing. You cannot really overlook the possibility that one of these days a search consultant calls you up to discuss an opportunity with a cab rental company.
After so much of void in the sector in India, entrepreneurs & businesses have realized the need for organized, professional services in the sector. The business model has been proved right. The incumbent players having done a fairly decent job when growth is concerned. The market is still nascent with ample opportunity to grow and therefore throws a great opportunity. The new age cab companies have become tech savvy, process oriented, have got decent investments allowing them to get good talent and expand, and have gained the trust of many as safe option to travel as compared to cabs from unorganized setups.
For those who still feel that the local transport / taxi / cab business is all about immature and unorganized business, let’s just have a quick look at some of the players in the system. These players so far had been the cab companies – owning and operating cabs. Now we also have aggregators who provide a booking platform, to aggregate the capacity available from various local level operators to offer 24×7 booking services – with transparent pricing and promise of good quality service. The list is indicative and captures some to the players that emerge upfront on top of the mind recall.
We will categorize the players into two categories:
– Rental Services who own the Cabs
– Booking Services & Aggregators
Merucabs: One of the most visible brands with over 5000 cabs plying in Delhi/NCR, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. The company has been invested in by India Value Fund. In 2006, India Value Fund (IVF), a premier private equity fund, managing a corpus of over US $ 1.4 Billion took an equity stake in the Company, with a view to create one of the finest passenger transportation businesses in the country.
Carzonrent: The most visible brand of the company in rental space is Easycabs (founded in 2007). The company also holds the license to operate Hertz car rental in India. The company had earlier raised around INR80 crore from Sidbi Venture Capital, WestBridge Capital and BTS Investment Advisors, which together own about 32 per cent stake in Carzonrent. The company has invested over 400 Crs. In the business and presently operates about 6500 cars in 13 cities.
Carzonrent, has recently acquired QCABS, an online car rental service aggregator. The acquisition has been in line with Carzonrent’s growth strategy to foray into retail space.
QCABs was founded in 2011 and the company has aggregated reliable vendors across the city to ensure great service to its customers.
Olacabs: The company founded by IIT alumni, Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhat started in 2011 and offers its services in Delhi and Mumbai. Olacabs aggregates the capcity of small travel operators and single vehicle owners. This allows the small operators to increase utilization of their cars. Earlier on this company had got angel funding by veteran entrepreneurs and investors including Anupam Mittal & Rehan Yar Khan. In April 2012 has received a Series A funding from Tiger Global. (Tiger Global, is an investor in Flipkart, and has good investments in the indian e-commerce space. The company has invested in Zansaar, Myntra , Motor Exchange etc.)
TaxiForSure.com: Promoted by Serendipity Infolabs Private Limited, the online taxi booking site TaxiForSure.com, has raised venture capital funding from Accel Partners, Helion Venture Partners and Blume Ventures. The venture was was founded by IIM Ahmedabad graduates Raghunandan G and Aprameya Radhakrishna in June 2011. TaxiForSure.com is an aggregator of car rentals and taxis in India. They work with various taxi operators and enable them with technology to ensure that customers get an easily accessible, safe, reliable taxi ride ‘for sure’.
Savaari: Savaari Car Rentals Pvt Ltd, has received a Series A funding of $ 1Mn, from Inventus Capital Partners. The funds are slated to be invested in technology backend to enable easy and reliable bookings management. The company offers rental services in over 60 cities.
Apart from the above mentioned, there are other online platforms, aggregators and car rental services and new ones are coming up, giving a clear indication of the car rental services driven and supported by technology coming up as an industry. In our follow up article we will have a look at the typical job opportunities that are getting created in this sector.
– Research Desk, ©HiringSquare.com
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