To station 100,000 bikes and cars at OYO’s properties across India over the next three years
Bangalore-based vehicle sharing platform, Drivezy, announced a strategic business partnership with OYO Hotels & Homes, India and South Asia’s largest, China’s 2nd largest, world’s 3rd largest and fast-est-growing chain of hotels, homes, living, and workspaces.
Bangalore-based vehicle sharing platform, Drivezy, announced a strategic business partnership with OYO Hotels & Homes, India and South Asia’s largest, China’s 2nd largest, world’s 3rd largest and fastest-growing chain of hotels, homes, living, and workspaces. With the alliance, the company looks to leverage OYO’s expansive network of over 10,000 leased and franchised buildings with footprints in over 300 cities across the country and create on-site hubs to station its bikes and cars. The hubs will offer OYO’s guests as well as other customers convenient access to Drivezy’s wide range of vehicles. The company has already stationed 1,200 bikes at OYO hotels in the cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad and looks to increase the tally to 100,000 bikes and cars over the next three years.
“OYO is India and South Asia’s largest hotel chain and commands a massive customer base. We are really excited to work with them as we both believe in the common philosophy of the sharing economy. Establishing on-site hubs with OYO will allow us to further increase our penetration in the growing tourism sector which is mostly dependent on cabs and chauffeur-driven car rentals. We believe that our partnership will offer a cost-effective and convenient alternative to guests staying at OYO,” says Amit Sahu, co-founder of Drivezy.
Commenting on this alliance Gaurav Ajmera, Chief Operating Officer, India & South Asia, OYO Hotels & Homes, said, “We are pleased to partner with Drivezy, a brand renowned for their travel offerings. Every traveler today shows an increasing appetite for experiences that make their stay super convenient and hassle-free. With this partnership, we look to address the commuting requirements of our guests. Our association with Drivezy will help us add a new dimension to our service offerings, ensuring that our guests have a perfect stay with their own independent hired vehicle without having to worry about booking cabs or drivers.”
Drivezy along with OYO intends to make the entire experience of visiting any city in the country affordable and easily accessible. All a guest staying at an OYO property needs to do, is get on to the Drivezy platform and type the pin code and he/she will get the first preference to hire the vehicle and as the vehicles are parked in the property itself, the guest faces no inconvenience whatsoever.
Having enlisted more than 12,000 vehicles on its platform since January this year, Drivezy has been aggressively scaling its presence in the Indian market. Last year, the company had inked an agreement with Harbourfront Capital to enlist assets worth $100 Million on its platform. The alliance will allow the company to swiftly expand its footprint across the country and tap new markets, further bolstering their foothold as market leaders in the vehicle sharing segment. The new on-site hubs will be accessible to OYO guests as well as regular Drivezy customers.
Founded in 2015, Drivezy offers cars, motorcycles and scooters on rent at 100 locations in 11 Indian cities. Drivezy currently operates a fleet of 4000 cars and 14000 bikes making it the fastest-growing vehicle sharing platform and the largest two-wheeler sharing service in the country. The company competes with a wide array of players, but what marks Drivezy apart is that it is the only vehicle sharing platform to feature both bikes and cars. Customers can rent vehicles from Drivezy on an hourly or daily basis through the company’s website and mobile app. Drivezy also offers weekly and monthly subscriptions on its bikes and scooters.
The company is currently working on an on-demand rental option to tap the demand for last-mile mobility. “Contemporary players in the on-demand shared mobility space have adopted a free-floating model where customers are free to drop the asset anywhere within city limits. While this model has its advantages, it is extremely difficult to ensure the well-being of the assets being rented and prevent vandalism. To counter this, we are establishing a dense network of parking spaces in all operational cities and our association with OYO is a step in that direction. Unlike existing services, customers will have to drop their vehicles at Drivezy locations once their trip ends. We have already commenced the deployment of keyless IoT locks on all our vehicles. These would allow customers to unlock their designated vehicles with a QR code scanner, available on the Drivezy app,” explains Ashwarya Singh, CEO of Drivezy.
Drivezy (formerly JustRide) was one among the few startups selected by the Silicon Valley based startup accelerator, Y Combinator, for the 2016 summer batch. Drivezy is also backed by the internet search giant, Google. Co-founded in 2015 by Ashwarya Singh, Abhishek Mahajan, Hemant Sah, Vasant Verma and Amit Sahu, Drivezy operates India’s largest peer-to-peer vehicle sharing network.
