[Sounak04]

I voted "NO".

I used to use Zoomcar Services a lot in 2016-17. But by the end of it, the company started creating a lot of nuisances. Thankfully, all my refunds were made in time albeit with some delays.

Once i booked a Creta from Kolkata airport. Our ancestral house is in Kharagpur, which is roughly a 2-3 hours drive from kolkata. I was travelling with my Family. We stopped for break near Kolaghat (halfway mark) for eating. It was 5 in the evening and the month was December. As people from W.B. would know that it gets dark very quickly during Winter evenings. We tried to start our car and shockingly it would not start. I called Zoomcar and they send a representative from Kolkata who took 6 hours to reach our location. On asking why was he late he said that he was informed only about 3 hours prior. Can you imagine being stuck at an isolated location with our family for almost 7 hours? This incident was the final nail in coffin. Never after that did i book a car with Zoomcar.

Zoomcar, when new was really good. I do not know what happened to them over the years.

There is another Self drive company called Revv. I have no idea about it Financials. But in the past 2 years, i have made numerous booking with them and have never been disappointed. Not only the Cars were properly maintained, i never faced any issues with delay in the refund. They were always on time with the refunds.

I still wonder how come i had positive experiences with Revv and not with Zoomcar, even though Zoomcar is a way older company? Is it because Zoomcar intentionally do not care for their customers or has the economic slump hit them more than its rivals?

[Abhi5868]

My experience with them has been limited to a single day stint I had in Pune. Mum,me and sis had planned to visit Imagica along with a couple of places in Lonavala and the taxi rates were sky high because of the Christmas holiday rush. That's where zoomcar came to our rescue and their rates were so reasonable mum gave the nod in a single go.
The cherry on top was a well maintained Ford freestyle . The only gripe was that I had to travel 15km in peak Pune traffic all the way to Bavdhan to collect the car. That day ranks the best in our otherwise Plain Jane Pune trip. However I'm told by my not so lucky acquaintances that mine was a one off case.


It's sad to see the downfall of the pioneers of car renting scene in India because of mismanagement and malign business practices.

[CarJunki]

The only target group that still considers Zoom rentals as option is youngsters just in their first jobs, going on trips with friends.
Others who are looking for travel with family members are better off hiring traditional taxi with chauffeur.
As with Zoom you do not know what is the condition of vehicle (mechanically, safety gear, and other important electronics). It is a safety hazard. I will never want to be inside any self drive rental car with my family. It is simply too unsafe.

There is a lot of space and scope for rental business but not at the bottom of pyramid that Zoom went for. Such a targeting was not accidental but deliberate. Other rentals are also following similar pattern.

[SS-Traveller]

Interesting assessment of scenario in a Covid-19-affected world. I'm sure Zoom's owners / head honchos will staunchly deny the risk of their closing down.

Originally Posted by GTO

• The company clearly has no money today.

• The travel segment isn't expected to recover for a long time, thanks to Covid.

And VCs aren't lining up with more funds, as you'd mentioned...

• No investor will be willing to invest money in this business.

But their disrepute about not returning customers' money, i.e. ...

• The "Zoom Car" brand itself has become a bad name, thanks to not returning customer monies... Cheat 1 Indian and you just lost 10,000 others.

...is directly related to no further investments coming in.

• Zoom's customer service sucks, according to multiple reviews.
...& their poorly maintained cars.

• The state of their fleet is pretty sad.

The average age of ZoomCar's fleet would matter. The longer they put off replacing old and worn-out cars, the more customers they would lose, and more the customers they lose, the less likely they are to be able to replace the fleet - classic Catch-22 situation.

[vvivek85]

Voted for a big no, irrespective of them overcoming this situation, if you don't ethically run the business, you don't deserve to do business. Whatever be the situation you are in, know to be transparent to the customers. You can't hold the hard earned customer money just because you missed the fundamentals of running business.

[jkrishnakj]

I voted NO. I wonder where will their next round of investments come from. It looks like a situation where working capital seems to be a very big problem on hand. And all their negative reviews is not helping them either.

They spread out to many cities - and that was a great strategy, but i still don't understand their logic of having to spread out to many areas inside the city. This probably is their biggest reason for not being able to provide ' Clean ' cars.

Maybe a 2 location strategy by city would have worked better. It could have been a large area that they can use to keep their several cars, a place with a professional office with real employees and a better customer care service is what they missed. You have to make it easier for customers who want to use your product. You cant expect them to be using google maps trying to locate that smallest lane in an area where you hunt down a car after searching for 30 minutes ( my experience at Siliguri, a new place for me, and it wasnt a pleasant experience locating their parking place ).

I see many male members who have had issues during pick up, issues with the pick u location and the general upkeep and cleanliness of the cars ( I got a badly baterred down car once, spent my own money to do a thorough water wash / vacuum clean ). I wonder how many women in our country would haver felt super comfortable in using zoom with such issues. Everytime i have travelled outside to the States, i have seen my lady colleagues there fly down from the home city to the work city, rent a car, drive them for the 3 days, return the car and fly back home, all in a jiff. That's the experience that zoom had the opportunity to provide.

[steadfast]

Voted No.

I believe Bankruptcy announcement is coming.

Key reasons behind this unfortunate situation -

A.) Short term and over optimistic business planning. Possible, inefficient planning on asset maintenance and disposal at right time.
Perfect example of a startup replicating the business model from markets abroad with great excels, forecasts and numbers however missing out on non quantitative analysis of the social, income and mindset factors of the local market.

B.) Majority of Careless Customers who never treated cars in the right ethical way. Further hampered the sustenance of business model.

C.) Ideally in a self-owned-assets heavy startup, companies should target profitability by 3rd to max 5th year and should never shy of charging premium to achiever these goals. Spending infinitely is good for business with low entry barriers or low asset ownership or where valuation is purely based on customer base and not on asset health.

In this case, even if bankruptcy situation is prevented somehow, valuation of firm would have already hit badly due to bad assets and costs involved to make these assets worth Customers' experience.

Note - My assumptions are that Zoomcar owns all its cars and not a marketplace like Airbnb or Uber.

[Sanjivvohra]

Their business model, plus their utter disregard for the customer, was their undoing. Taking customer deposits as a form of funding? Can't last long with this attitude.

[sridharj77]

Voted No for Zoom car's survival.

Multiple points contributed to its failure, including the inability of us Indians to treat others' property with due care.

I have seen people owning 20L cars, but choosing Zoom Cars and then driving them very rashly over very muddy and uneven surfaces (don't want to call them roads!). Education does not confer civilization, it seems.

Customer Service and Operations teams very abused in bad language by many individuals for very trivial reasons (I have heard it a few times, when standing in the pickup area), and so they become hardened, lose patience and trust with their customers.

I rented their cars 8-10 times (Bangalore, Chennai, even in Hyderabad), but once when I had a flat tyre (I got it fixed myself at my cost, since I was driving it), they did not believe that the tyres had tubes (they insisted they were tubeless, even after I showed the videos). They even sent me a letter asking me to pay for 4 tubeless tyres thinking I had stolen them!

Luckily, I had got it fixed at a authorized Toyota center and they confirmed that it was not the case.

They never apologized for the language they used over phone and for almost preventing me and my family from boarding the flight back home.

1 single anecdote and an outlier data point in the overall scheme of things, but I realized the business model was going to fail - too soon in a market like India, where Self-drive is an alien concept.

[Inquisitive]

I hope they just go out of business before people die while using their unsafe cars. My family has a very personal nightmare of using their Creta that came with perfectly bald tyres that would not hold up in the roads of Sittong valley in Darjeeling that at places have inclines of more than 30 degrees. Thank heavens that there was very little traffic and it was not raining, otherwise none of us three would have lived to tell the tale. After this episode, my wife does not allow me to rent a car on our vacations.

[1.2TSI7DSG]

Never had a first hand experience with zoomcars
But voted no!

1. Cash burning startups are going to be in trouble
2. I have seen people(friends) renting out zoomcars to learn to drive
3. Horrible procedure of handing over and taking back- experience has been good if you have a new car/if you get an old one, god bless you
4. No upkeep. Not expecting a new car every time but atleast one clean decent shape
5. Replacement / breakdowns are tough to manage

[satishchugh]

Voted No.

I have been a Revv customer and have used their service many times across cities (Delhi, Pune) and the experience has been always good -

1. Their app doesn't work on my iPhone, but their customer service listens.
2. Their transactions are clear and you get your money back. In one case, there was a confusion and they refunded my money immediately after I called their customer service.
3. The handover happen at home, their drivers are polite and overall experience has been good.
4. Even their older cars (I availed one Ecosport at 78K Kms and a Duster at 100K Kms) are well kept.

So the model clearly works. And if Revv can do it, why not Zoomcar? I never tried Zoomcar because I never heard good reviews. So for me, its not a question of model but of a company that isn't customer focussed.

[AirbusCapt]

I think we are are reading it wrong. The rent a car model is finished not because of customer profile, business model, hygiene, lack of maintenance etc but simply because of covid.
Zoomcar would have kept getting funding had covid not happened. The lockdowns, interstate travel restrictions, public fear of travel and the fear of using a shared transport made the VC finding realise the futility of investing in this business model. There appears almost nil demand for the next 2/3 years due the almost certain post covid recession.

[Hayek]

I think of Zoom Car as the equivalent of Air Deccan - bringing an internationally successful model to India, but failing due to bad execution and bad luck (Covid). I do think that the model has merits - Covid will not last forever, and there is a value to the sharing economy and self drive rentals, especially when enabled by tech.

One day, the equivalent of an Indigo will come in and get the execution right - and we will all be renting self drive cars on our vacations (and perhaps even in our home towns). To add, as IOT becomes more common, it should be possible to track and blacklist abusive renters - which will make the model more sustainable.

[1.2TSI7DSG]

Originally Posted by Hayek

I think of Zoom Car as the equivalent of Air Deccan - bringing an internationally successful model to India, but failing due to bad execution and bad luck (Covid). I do think that the model has merits - Covid will not last forever, and there is a value to the sharing economy and self drive rentals, especially when enabled by tech.

One day, the equivalent of an Indigo will come in and get the execution right - and we will all be renting self drive cars on our vacations (and perhaps even in our home towns). To add, as IOT becomes more common, it should be possible to track and blacklist abusive renters - which will make the model more sustainable.

Lovely analogy

I too agree to this. In fact I strongly believe that the day we have driver penalty points on driving licence and the insurance premium is linked to them we will have much safer drivers. Very similar to CIBIL credit scores. If I had that I would charge the rent accordingly

Till then i will continue not to trust the drivers to care about the rented car