Why Own A Car When You Can Rent One Steadily changing the way Indian consumers approach car ownership.
By Samiksha Jain •
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A successful entrepreneur with rich insights on marketing strategies and distribution networking, Sakshi Vij founded Myles, a self-drive mobility service in 2013. The company is steadily changing the way the Indian consumers approach car ownership by delivering flexibility, convenience, and lower financial burden through the most tailored self-drive automobile solutions. Myles has today grown from 14 cars and three locations to over 1200 cars and 250 locations with the presence in 21 Indian cities.
Not only this, company has a comprehensive global footprint with operations in 145 countries through strategic partnerships with international service providers such as autoeurope and rentalcars.com.
During Entrepreneur India 2016 show, we met Sakshi Vij, Founder and CEO, Myles where she shared her views on urban mobility and how Myles is contributing to it.
According to you what will be the definition of mobility in the future?
What's happening in India as far as urban mobility is concerned and on a larger level as far as a shared economy is concerned is largely what's defining or what's going to define the future of mobility in India. The organizations like us or brands like us are actually working towards building an ecosystem where people can co-share cars and that's what Myles does, the fact that people can co-share cars, the fact that ride sharing is becoming more popular, this is all defining what's going to be the definition of mobility in the future.
What need you are addressing?
I believe the definition of mobility is going to blur the lines between private and public transport. What we are doing as Myles today is trying to eliminate the need for people to own vehicles. The fact that there are about 2.5-2.6 million cars which are owned in the Indian environment every year, which are personal cars, means that we are adding way too many cars than our cities can handle. The congestion levels are only going to increase if we don't move towards steps in the future quickly and that's exactly what Myles is doing. We are taking steps towards it. We are now in the 21st century, and we would like to grow quickly on this space as well.
Who do you really consider your competitors to be?
At this point of time in the car sharing space, there are a few regional and multi-city players that exist and there are players who are trying to make changes in the car ownership market. What we are trying to do is more than competition we are trying to work with the car ownership space which is the OEM space in order to change the way people are going to own cars in the future. The fact that co-ownership needs to become more popular is what's important to us.
I don't think we have reached a stage in India with actual large competition in this space yet, the customer is still moving towards it, and therefore that's what we're going for.
Why OEMs are investing in car sharing space?
What car sharing is able to do for the OEM space is to facilitate OEMs that were originally manufacturers of the product, and sellers of the product, are now going to also become service providers. We are becoming channels for them to enable their cars be available for a much larger group of people. Additionally the overall mileage of the car would go up and life of the vehicle will go down, and that will help OEMs to grow even further. That's why you see OEMs investing in car sharing as a space.
