An increasing number of new-age urbane youth are discovering the city roads and highways with self-drive car rentals. While owning a car may be an expensive option for many, the youngsters with a mobile lifestyle are choosing to live life in the carefree lane.
“Owning a car comes with a set of hassles like the EMI, insurance, maintenance and an annual depreciation of value. Considering that, living in the big metros is as much a struggle; it only makes sense not to increase your commitments. That’s where self-drive car rentals come into the picture. You get the comfort of driving it as per your wish and pay for the usage of the car,” says Sakshi Vij, Founder and CEO of Myles, a self-drive car rental service. “For office goers who prefer to drive to and from work on a daily basis or the ones who have a travel-heavy job, it’s handy to rent a car of your choice, instead of investing lakhs in a single car. There’s a huge start-up culture and people are open to moving. Young urbane Indians are hopping cities like never before. And, moving into a new city, you really don’t want to be immobile. That is where we step in.”
Myles which hit the roads with 14 cars has become a prime player in the self-drive car rental business. “To our surprise, all our cars were booked within five days for the entire month. We think Myles is an alternative ecosystem for car ownership.” With a fleet of 1,000 cars and nearly 2,00,000 customers, operating in over 21 cities in India, Myles is like an alternative ecosystem today for car ownership.
“Considering that Indian roads and cities have a huge issue of congestion and parking infrastructures are so poor and inadequate, I think, to drive a rented car is much more convenient,” says Divya Raghunath, a techie based in Bangalore. “Also, there are more choices of cars to choose from. You may choose a small car for city driving while you may pick a luxury sedan or SUV for holidays and highway drives.” “I have been a city person and it just struck me how when you go to a city in Europe or in the US, you find this line of dedicated well-maintained shared cars and it’s so comfortable. You can access a car at any point of time. This is how they control congestion and pollution,” says Simran Sahi, who regularly rents self-drive cars.
“The first set of people who came to us were the kinds who owned a Santro or Honda at home but while going on a holiday they needed a luxury vehicle,” says Sakshi. “We paved the way for people to not own an expensive luxury car but still drive them. It sort of takes care of the need for a second car in a household.”
Self-drive car rentals have also become a platform that connects car owners to car users. For instance, Myles has a fleet of under utilised cars. “For the owner, it’s monetisation of their asset and for the user, it’s reducing the expense of car ownership,” says Sakshi. “On an average, a rented car comes at Rs.50 per hour and if you are going to use it only for two hours a day, then you finish it off with just Rs.100. The payment is just according to the usage.” As a self-drive car provider, Myles has also included electric cars in their fleet to promote the concept among the users.
