How Peersome is simplifying the self drive car rental space in India

July 11, 2016

‘Life is expensive.’ A lesson we are taught from the very beginning of our lives. However, we realize the depth of these words only when we start living on our own. Both young professionals and entrepreneurs struggling to afford a mere living in a metropolitan know what an expensive affair it is to own your own wheels. This is where Peersome comes to your aid.

A self drive car rental service provider, Peersome enables verified local vendors to rent their cars and bikes at an affordable rate. Currently operating in Bangalore, Peersome provides you with a wide variety of car models and types over varying budgets which you can choose according to your own convenience.

What ignited this initiative?

Sayanta Ghosh and Pavani S, two buddies working at Flipkart would often engage over small talk. One of their favorite topics would be questioning the necessity of owing a car. The basis of their discussion was that cars are barely utilized for an average of just 5% of the times. With such low usage, owning a car becomes an expensive proposition as it sits in the garage adding to parking and maintenance costs and its value keeps depreciating.

“It was so sad to see parking lots everywhere crammed with cars.” says Sayanta. It was then that an idea crept into their minds and they realized the requirement of cars for intra-city travel, small trips or personal usage which could easily be fulfilled with a flexible renting system. They thought they could build a platform where cars could be rented out easily according to a user’s specific requirements. Along with this the platform could also have some sturdy revenue flowing in. Hence, Peersome was born.

What motivates you?

Car rental is quite an old and established concept in the US and European countries. However, in India it’s relatively a new concept. Due to this, a flexible system is lacking in this field. Self drive concept attracts quite a large section of the society who want to go out on short trips or use it for some business or personal errands in the city itself. Avoiding the hassles of dealing with the drivers and the ability to drive high-end cars at affordable prices are major attractions for car rental concept.

“The lack of a flexible renting system, low utilization for vendors, low transparency/ discoverability in the car rental space and a hope to utilize the existing myriads of cars to reduce the need for new ones.” says Sayanta, Co-founder of Peersome.

Journey and progress of Peersome

Since its commencement 9 months ago Peersome has been aiming towards becoming a one-stop destination for car rental space. Peersome aims at addressing the pain point of several individuals. In this age a car becomes a necessity sometimes. A chauffeur driven car is not always cost effective. Rental cars give you flexibility and the added cost advantage. Peersome has over 150 different offerings and have already served over 3000+ customers. “Having over one lakh website users and through our commission based model we generate a revenue of about 2 lakhs per month.” says Sayanta.

sayanta-pavani Their team consists of Sayanta Ghosh who’s an engineer from IIT Kharagpur, Kedar Bramhe who’s an engineer from the University Institute of Technology RGPV and a tech geek and Pavani who’s an engineer from IIT Guwahati. Pavani and Sayanta met at Flipkart Supply Chain. They met Kedar through a mutual friend and since then he has been the base of Peersome. Kedar laid the tech architecture of Peersome and worked on every aspect of development single-handedly when the startup took wings.
Peersome previously went through a 100-day intensive accelerator program by Axilor Ventures in its second batch for Winter 2015. The program was specially designed to improve the odds of success of early stage entrepreneurs. They started off with bootstrapping and in April, 2016 they raised seed funding from Times Internet and are currently being incubated by TLabs in Bangalore. They are looking forward to raising their next round of funding pretty soon.

“We are primarily focused on inbound marketing since 70% of our traffic comes from organic search.” says Pavani. Using online advertising, PPC they are working on several marketing opportunities for scaling up. They are planning on using the idea of 360 degree marketing which will include offline marketing as well.

Challenges you’ve faced

“Major blockades have been legal limitations. India has mainly two categories for cars namely individual and commercial. There’s a clear line which separates the two kinds of cars thus, we cannot have a white board car rented out.” Says Pavani. They also realized that for self-drive cars it’s very difficult and expensive to attain a ‘rent-a-cab’ license which doesn’t allow many vendors to operate legally. However, license sharing through royalty paved a way for them to get more cars in the market.

Future for you

“We intend on making Peersome the platform which satisfies all kinds of vehicle rental needs, a one-stop platform for a customer with the need of a long-term, short-term rental or a commute requirement can bank on for quality and on-demand service.” the Co-founder added.

Presently maintaining an asset light model they soon intend to enter an affiliate model by which they can have a need-based supply side which would eliminate the problem of skewed demands for car rentals. They also intend to drive the highest return-based utilization so that there is a consistent supply to aid the platform.

So, the next time you need a car be it for short trip or just because you want to try a new model you know you will get it at Peersome website, hassle free!