When it comes to automobiles, millennials today do not believe in ownership and maintenance of their cars and bikes. They believe in renting, using, enjoying, and being merry! Exploiting this insight merely on its merit, Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, Abhishek Mahajan, Vasant Verma, and Amit Sahu started Drivezy in the year 2015.
Drivezy (formerly JustRide) is India’s largest marketplace for car and two-wheeler sharing. Through Drivezy, travelers can book scooters, motorcycles and cars from people living around them.
Drivezy – Company Highlights
| Startup Name | Drivezy |
|---|---|
| Headquarter | Bengaluru, India |
| Sector | Automotive ecommerce, Rental |
| Founders | Abhishek Mahajan, Amit Sahu, Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, Vasant Verma |
| Founded | April 2015 |
| Parent Organization | Drivezy India Travels Private Limited |
| Website | drivezy.com |
| Contact | support@drivezy.com |
About Drivezy and How it Works
Founders of Drivezy and team
How was Drivezy Started?
Drivezy – Startup Launch
Drivezy – Business Model and Revenue Model
Drivezy – Startup Challenges
Drivezy – Competitors
Drivezy – Funding and Investors
Drivezy – Growth
Drivezy – Future Plans
Vidhi Punamiya
About Drivezy and How it Works
All in all, Drivezy is a car rental platform. Car owners can list their vehicles on Drivezy when they are not using it and the customers can rent it whenever they want to. It offers the following features to the users:
- Bookings can be done on the website or from the mobile application.
- 18+ is the legal age to book bikes and cars on Drivezy.
- The users can book the vehicles on an hourly, daily, weekly basis. They also have the option of fuel or no fuel vehicle bookings.
- The security deposit on Drivezy is minimal. It can range from INR 0 to INR 999.
- Drivezy provides its customers with home pickup service.
- Drivezy releases instant payments to the car owners and refunds to the consumers in the given case.
Founders of Drivezy and team
The Drivezy founders are Abhishek Mahajan, Amit Sahu, Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, and Vasant Verma.
- Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Co-founder and CEO of Drivezy – Ashwarya is a graduate in Electronics and Communication Engineering. Also an alumnus of Y Combinator batch of 2016 and the first batch of Google Launchpad. He served as a mentor at Launchpad during his post-Graduation.
- Hemant Kumar, Co-founder of Drivezy – Before launching Drivezy, Kumar was an application developer at Service Now and a senior consultant at Oracle India before that. Kumar has graduated in B.tech from MNNIT.
- Abhishek Mahajan, Co-founder of Drivezy – Graduated from IIT Bombay, Abhishek was an Associate Consultant at PwC India. He is also a CFA Level 2 candidate.
- Vasant Verma, Co-founder and COO of Drivezy – Before Drivezy, Verma worked as a global market analyst at Nomura. Vasant Verma has a graduation degree in B.tech from MNNIT.
- Amit Sahu, Co-founder of Drivezy – After graduating from the MNNIT, Allahabad, Sahu worked as a vehicle testing engineer in Honda R&D India Dept. Performance testing of Various cars would fall under his domain. After this, he went on to work at Drivezy.
Rishabh Rathi
How was Drivezy Started?
It all started when one of the co-founders Ashwarya Singh bought a new car that met with an accident in the early days itself. Singh didn’t use the car so much but still considerably spent a chunk of his salary in the maintenance of the car. This got him thinking about creating a platform where one could rent cars.
There was one more thought that drove the inception of Drivezy, then justride.in, that the majority of people in India can’t afford to buy cars. He then went on to discuss this idea with his college friends, now the co-founders and launched Drivezy in 2015 in Bangalore.
Drivezy – Startup Launch
Drivezy was previously called Just Ride. In 2017, the team thought of adding bikes to their range of products to expand and increase their user base. Drivezy works on a model where the ideal cars and bikes of the owners are listed with them and the vehicle owners can generate cash even when they are not using the bikes or cars. The individual owners of the commercial vehicles are also registering with Drivezy to make money.
Drivezy – Business Model and Revenue Model
The Drivezy business model works on commission. Drivezy lets the vehicle owners list their vehicles on their mobile applications. The company takes roughly 20-25% of the revenue pooled from renting this vehicle.
Kimi Dutta
Drivezy – Startup Challenges
The first and foremost hurdle for Drivezy was the trust issues amongst the vehicle owners. They wouldn’t just rent their cars to random strangers. Though Drivezy provides guarantees, aggregator model, a peer-to-peer sharing model, and background checks of the users, this is a major challenge in the Indian markets.
The second hurdle was difficulty in leasing and buying of cars due to the financial problems.
With the onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic, most of the businesses that relied on transport and communication, and mobility found themselves on unstable grounds. Drivezy is not an exception and therefore, after bearing with the economic downturn for over a year, the Bengaluru-based car and bike rental startup has finally decided to be acquired by Yamaha. The size of the acquisition will range between $45-50 million, as per reports.
Drivezy – Competitors
Drivezy cars kind of operates in a perfectly competitive market. There’s immense competition in the market with major players having massive market standing. Drivezy in totality competes with taxi aggregators and ridesharing startups like Ola, Uber, Bounce, LetsRide, PoolCircle, ZoomCar, Carzonrent, Wunder, and Ryde among others.
Drivezy – Funding and Investors
When it comes to funding, Drivezy has raised a total of $149.3M in funding over 10 rounds from various investors including Das Capital, Axon Partners, IT-Farm, Yamaha Motor Ventures, and Y Combinator, among others.
Here is a list of all the funding rounds of Drivezy:
| Date | Stage | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| August 2015 | Angel Round | $1 million | Anirudh Damani, Alok Mittal, Niraj Singh |
| November 2015 | Seed Round | $2 million | – |
| March 2016 | Series A | $400K | Dheeraj Jain |
| August 2016 | Venture Round | $120K | Y Combinator |
| November 2016 | Venture Round | $3 million | Susa Ventures, Kima Ventures, Axon Ventures, SCM Holdings and ITFarm from Japan |
| October 2017 | Venture Round | $10 million | Das Capital |
| February 2018 | Initial COin Offering | $5 million | Susa Ventures, Kima Ventures, Axon Ventures and other exiting investors along with other HNIs from Japan and Singapore |
| April 20, 2018 | Second Round of Initial COin Offering | $8 million | Susa Ventures, Kima Ventures, Axon Ventures and other exiting investors along with other HNIs from Japan and Singapore |
| November 2018 | Series B | $20 million | IT-Farm, Das Capital, Yamaha |
| November 2018 | Debt Financing | $100 million | AnyPay |
The company, since inception, had raised total funding of $49.45 million before closing the huge asset financing deal. In 2018, Drivezy secured $100 Mn in an asset financing deal with which the Drivezy team plans to induct close to 50,000 vehicles. The company had raised an amount close to $149.3 million.
Rishabh Rathi
Drivezy – Name, Tagline, and Logo
The company’s tagline is “Drive It Like You Own It!”
As pioneers in the Indian self drive car rental industry, the company believes in the mantra- “Why buy a car, when you can rent one?”.
Drivezy – Growth
Drivezy’s growth is coming at what seems to be a key inflection point for the transportation industry. The company claims to have a customer base of about 1.5 million registered users and with around 93% of them coming from the 18-35 age bracket. Cofounder Ashwarya Singh told that it has processed over 4 lakh bookings, and has 500 employees in 11 cities.
- Operating cities- 21 cities of India
- Average monthly customers- 2,00,000
- Average monthly pending requests- 2300
- Average monthly revenue- $150,000
- Average monthly GMV- $950,000
The company earns a 15-30% commission for every successful transaction. In FY18, it clocked a GMV (Gross Merchandising Value) of $32 Million, growing by 200% since 2017.
Drivezy – Future Plans
Drivezy clocked gross sales of $32 million in 2018 and is targeting $80 million in 2019. Besides this, the company plans to launch in the US by starting with a fleet of 200 cars in San Francisco. Drivezy also plans to lunch its operations in Southeast Asia soon.
Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs
How does Drivezy work?
Car owners can list their vehicles on Drivezy when they are not using it and the customers can rent it whenever they want to and they will be required to pay a nominal amount for every km travelled. The user will get the vehicle with full fuel tank and He/She has to return it with the same fuel level.
How much can I earn with Drivezy?
Drivezy claims that owners can earn up to INR 30,000/month by leasing out their vehicles.
Who are the Drivezy owners?
The Drivezy founders are Abhishek Mahajan, Amit Sahu, Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, and Vasant Verma.