#AtoZChallenge - Zoomcar

This is the last in the month-long series -- Blogging from A to Z April Challenge -- one post a day, except the four Sundays. I was posting on features related to my current place of residence, Bengaluru, formerly called by its anglicised version Bangalore. 

A big thank you for stopping by and keying in your comments. I'll follow up on the blogs and posts that I have missed as we get on the road trip from tomorrow. 

See you soon! And take care!

Zoomcar is the first self-drive car rental company in India. It was founded in Bengaluru in 2013, not by Indians, but by two Americans, David Back and Greg Moran. It's like the Zipcar services in the US.

That was a time when many Indians, who had gone to the US for studies and then worked for some time there, were returning home with entrepreneurial dreams and founded startups. 

One of the early examples was Anshuman Bapna, who did his MBA from Stanford, later quit his job with Google in New York, and moved back to Bengaluru to start Mygola, a travel planner in 2009. 

Mygola in a few years was doing so well that some of the world's biggest venture capitalists like Blumberg Capital and Helion Venture Partners were pumping in money. After six years Mygola was acquired by Makemytrip and all its employees moved to the new firm.

Even Americans were moving to India to set up companies, and among them were David Back and Greg Moran, who had met at the University of Pennsylvania from where they graduated. 

This what David Back had to say in a programme on PBS in 2014.

You know, it's being separated from our parents. For me, it's being– separated from my girlfriend for a year and a half. I think that's the real opportunity cost. It's still worth it, though. The scale of the opportunity here, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Greg Morga said:

I mean, we are still young. We're both under 30. We're not married. But we were very fortunate in the fact that for us at least, it was the perfect time in our lives.

Two years later, David Back resigned from the firm and returned to the US.

Zoomcar started with seven cars and now they operate in 28 cities with over 6,500 cars, with an average of around 3,000 rides daily. 

There are many other players too: like Driezy, Carzonrent, Ola Drive etc. But Zoomcar is pinning its hopes high. In this interview last week, Greg Morgan says:  

We are already seeing a 400% rise in demand and we expect this to settle down at 200-300% over the next few months. People are now looking for shorter-term mobility access as opposed to a long-term investment. As people would avoid public transport to keep themselves safe from contracting the virus, the need for rental cars will only go up.

(This concludes the A2ZChallenge.)