[RoadMonkey]

The math here is absurd. I just don't get it. How do they hope to succeed? Surely they must've done a feasibility study before investing.

Eg, a 2016 Grand i10 Asta AT is available for ₹19,702 for 24 months. That comes to ₹4,72,848.

A well maintained Grand i10 Asta AT is listed on OLX for anywhere from 4.75L to 5.5L. Including all the maintenance in the world, you can easily sell the same car for ~2-3lacs to something like car24 for convenience 2 years later. The per month cost would come to be about half or less than what's quoted here.

Why would anyone ever consider this?! Am I missing something here?

[alikidwhy]

Good idea but not a feasible business plan in India as we tend to keep our vehicles for longer and have lower cars per household than certain developed countries where this may be more feasible.

I just checked the price of Chevrolet Cruze and it works out to be ₹28,133 per month for 24 months which is a whopping ₹6,75,192. That’s all I’d say.

Even with maintenance thrown in, with this pricing they’re DOA except if they can find corporate clients because who’ll pay close to 7 big ones for a 6 year old discontinued car in Delhi which is a diesel (10 year rule) and still pay for suspension and other charges along with hidden charges.

Even I prefer owning cars because in our society is a sense of achievement and rightfully so.

[anjan_c2007]

Monthly leasing cost of the car almost equals EMI payable for the respective brand new or less used car. Perhaps, they will have private companies/firms as their customers, who are unwilling to invest in buying a car but are comfortable renting them. More or less like many tenants who prefer not to buy property.

Only time will unravel the mystery as to whether the Pum X 3 concept succeeds or bombs.

[charanreddy]

I would consider if the duration was 3 months or so. Makes a good use case for people relocating to a different city till they transfer or buy a car. Or needing a vehicle for short durations like marriage planning. However this should work to be much cheaper than zoom car else the idea is a non starter.

[vitesh.b]

I am not an expert by any means, but I have an observation: isn't the tax benefit of leasing cars as is applicable in new cars also an edge here. imagine the user working in an MNC which has a leasing policy as one of the perks (as i understand most companies allow new car OR used car leasing). will the employee not get the ca. 30% benefit here as well.

In the example earlier - if A6 is 80k / month, effective out flow after tax optimization will become ca. 56k / month, with ZERO down payment.

will that not make this competitive vs, buying ?

PS: am not a tax expert, but above is my understanding - feel free to correct.

[fazayal]

Originally Posted by drmohitg

Apart from the high cost of ownership, I feel such endeavours would never be successful in India since we associate owning a car as status symbol. The differentiating number late gives it a Taxi image. Hiring a car for a road trip is acceptable but having one as a everyday ride sporting that taxi plate is not going to go down well with the larger public.

Leasing cars don't have Taxi number plate. Companies like Leasplan, Orix etc. who lease cars to the corporate, these cars are regular white number plate.

[manasr28]

I availed services of PumPumPum in around 2023 May last year.

I newly moved to bangalore and required a car for my office commute. My Scorpio N booking was in waiting period and I did not want to invest in a second hand car.

The main thing that attracted me to PumPumPum was that they lease/rent self driven cars on a white number plate. Many housing societies due to their lack of knowledge treat self driven car's number plate (black background with yellow letters) as commercial vehicles and deny them in premises parking.

I contacted PumPumPum and got assigned to Mr Narpal Singh.
He was extremely courteous, patient, understanding and cleared all my doubts regarding the lease.

I went for a 2015 red color Ford Figo Aspire petrol. Since I wanted the car only for 3 months lease and the minimum lease period was 6 months, Mr Narpal agreed for the same after slightly increasing the montly lease amount which I was fine with.

They did my CIBIL check and moved ahead with the paper work. They took 2 months rental as deposit for the car. The monthly rentals are deducted automatically every month as ACH E-Mandate from your bank account, the same way as home loan emis are deducted.
This lease will actually show in your credit history throughout your life.

The paper work concluded in half a day and the same evening, the car was delivered.
Though the car was 8 years old and had clocked 56k on the odo, it was well maintained and in pristine condition, more than my expectations. They deliver the car with a bouquet making the delivery special.

Since I needed the car only for intra city commute, I did not bother to ask for fastag at the time of delivery, something which made the whole experience with PumPumPum bitter later.

One fine morning while having a need to take the car to the Bengaluru aiport, I realized that I need the fastag.

I connected with Mr Narpal and he guided me to the technical team. This is from where the ordeal began.

The technical team asked me to apply for the fastag myself from any of the fastag providers. I agreed for the same only to find out that this car already has a blacklisted fastag.

So it turned out that the previous customer of this vehicle had got the fastag on his name, did not maintain minimum balance on it and thus got the fastag blacklisted.
Till the previous fastag is not whitelisted and closed, a new fastag cannot be applied for.
To make the situation worse, the previous customer could not be reached on his mobile number. Also, you cannot recharge a fastag without the OTP from the registered mobile number.

Since fastag is now mandatory at Toll Plazas, I started mounting pressure on them to get me a fastag.

Till 10 days they kept on buying time, but finally sent their executive to pick up the car and get the fastag installed. They informed me before hand that the fastag would be issued on my mobile number(No KYC) to which I agreed only to realize later that I should not have.

Their executive picked up the car and went to hosur toll plaza to get the fastag. He asked for the OTPs that came on my mobile number which I gave to him. The fastag got activated within minutes.

I did a fresh search on the fastag portal with the car registartion number, but the fastag associated with this car still showed blacklisted.

Confused, I re-looked at the sms message that came as part of the fastag activation and to my shock, these people just did a scam.

Say, the car registration number was KA51 AB CDEF. Since there is already a balcklisted fastag on this registration, they got a new fastag issued on registration number KA51 A CDEF. They ommitted B intentionally from the registration. The reason why I call this a scam because there exists another old car of pre fastag era with the registration KA51 A CDEF and a new fastag got issued without the knowledge of that car owner since that car might not have an existing fastag. If this fastag is also blackisted by me, then that owner of the other vehicle is in trouble. All this happened with the collusion of Park+ people through whom the fastag was provided. Also, it seems that the fastag issuing bank "IDFC First bank" did not care much as vehicle's RC is supposed to be scrutinized before issuing fastag.
Now I realize why the government has recently made KYC mandatory for fastag.

I request every one reading this post that If you have an old car which you think does not have a fastag, please check once on the fastag portal/app to confirm.

I immediately brought this to the knowledge of that executive and his superiors, to which they rubbed it off saying that "Sir, we only merged one letter of the registration number, nothing to worry, if any trouble, contact us.".

Since I am a law abiding citizen and did not further wanted to be a part of this scam, I stopped taking the car to any route which contained a toll plaza.

I patiently waited for the delivery of my Scorpio N, once it got done, I returned the car immediately after 2 months of lease.

The return method went smoothly. They did not refund the unused lease amount which they had communicated earlier itself and I was fine with it. They returned my deposit without any fuss.

I had removed the fastag before returning the car, and then quickly got it closed so that the owner of the other car does not face any issue.

Apart from this fastag fiasco, the lease experience with PumPumPum was smooth.

Will I recommend PumPumPum to others ? Not sure.

[GeeTee TSI]

From lack of professionalism in maintaining a valid, working fastag, to outright fraud in playing with registration numbers! Glad you got out of the lease, I would never trust even mechanical integrity of the car from such a player

[Ltinsane]

A new Alto K 10 with loan for 5 years while factoring downpayment into EMI will have more or less similar EMI as PPP is charging for a 2016 model. And if you decide to sell the car after 3 years, you will have enough money left to cover maintenance after paying off the remaining loan. At most you will have to fork out extra for insurance but on the flip side you will get a brand new, 8-year newer model.