Team-BHP - Zoom Car Reviews - Self Drive Rentals in India

Excellent idea. If such an option is available in my city, I would be much more happier to buy a premium hatch and rent a sedan/UV whenever I need a bigger boot or a 7 seater. That would give me the comfort of a hatchback in the city during majority of the time when I use my car.

I did notice a blue figo with Zoom livery couple of days back. A quick search on my mobile did not lead to anything except for a LinkedIn page.
Thanks for sharing this information.

This is an absolute boon for people who need a car for short time. Hope they offer their cars at different locations as soon as possible.

Service of renting cars without drivers is very scarce in Maharashtra. But if you go to Kerala you'll find people renting cars without drivers on hourly/ daily/ weekly basis in every small village/town. A common incident shared by a person in similar business - "A guy rented a car and vanished, phone was switched off for many days and one fine day he calls back and boldly says that he mortgaged the car to some local lenders in a different city, and now is enjoying his time in Tamilnadu for another few weeks. He promised to return the car once he is able to cheat another car of a higher value. He also said you are free to approach the Police, but you won't be able to get you car back from those lenders. So wait till I con another car and release your's." :Shockked:

Excellent initiative! Why Bangalore of all the cities in India? Why not Chennai, the top city according to polls? I'm expecting similar initiatives to come up in Chennai! BTW, in the list "excluded from Zoom tariff", there is an item that reads "damage to vehicle or excessive cleaning". What's wrong with excessive cleaning? Shouldn't they be thanking the customer for doing that?

Quote:

Originally Posted by swiftdiesel (Post 3058508)

in the list "excluded from Zoom tariff", there is an item that reads "damage to vehicle or excessive cleaning". What's wrong with excessive cleaning? Shouldn't they be thanking the customer for doing that?

lol. It means that Zoom will charge extra if the car is brought back extremely filthy. Extra cleaning due to a very dirty car is excluded from Zoom tariff.

Must say a very good initiative especially having driven self-drive rentals in UK and Scotland. However, those places are incomparable to Indian scenario. So the biggest question to my mind would be the damages and how will the agency and rentee deal with them.

It says there in regulations, the insurance is provided but damages will have to be borne by rentee.

Now, how does one go about understanding this? What factors segregate insurance from damage coverage, what are the extents, are they clearly defined? Why would the rentee have to bear the damages (except for maybe internal intentional/un-intentional damages) etc? How will both parties be satisfied if such a situation arises?

Very nice concept!

And the pricing is spot on. As I have experienced (in Punjab), self drive rentals cost around 1500-2000 INR per day (for a Ford Fiesta, or Indigo) plus the cost of fuel with typical cab owners.

I see that the entire model has been build based upon that of Zipcar. I use Zipcar at least once a week and am very pleased with it. One difference that I see between Zoom and Zipcar is that Zipcar gives its members a smartcard which can be used to lock/unlock the cars (Zipcar does not encourage taking the key out) while Zoom is based more on iPhone/Android app and it can be a problem sometime (what if you do not have network coverage to even start your reservation).

After using Zipcar for some time, I wanted something that would allow one way trips too and came across Car2Go which has a fleet of Mercedes SmartCars and you can pick up a car from anywhere and drop it at parking near your destination and be done; no need to return the car to the same location you picked it from.

Its a wonderful idea and a great initiative.Comes across as a boon for people like us who have parents visiting sometimes(say twice a year) and we want to show them around town(Nandi Hills,Malls,visit relatives).Beats 'putting up with smelly and haggling cab drivers' hands down.

Great news indeed, you don't have to depend on taxi fellows for short round trips in and around the city. Hope this concept succeed and flourish, actually this is the way forward for a developing India.

Great initiative I am sure, but has anyone considered the perennial woes related to parking, which is the general scenario in pretty much all Indian cities?

Personally I will take the chauffeur driven option any day of the week, at least, in India.

Looks like an interesting option, but in Bangalore traffic what if there is a scratch or a dent? Looks like one will have to shell out Rs 2500 for any incident/damage http://www.zoomcar.in/fees.php. Also note the late fees if not returned in time is Rs600. It is hard to see this can compete with the Indica 4hr/8hr package. The 150km per day restriction will rule out any out of city trips. They need to come out with better pricing/business model to survive.

I emailed them and they say that they expect to open a few more branches soon.

We will be expanding across Bangalore shortly. *We expect to have a
new location in Kormangala in 1 to 2 months, followed by MG Road,
Whitefield, Indiranagar, Electronic City, and others.

Given this it may be possible to have the model where you can pick up a car at one location and drop it off at another. At present they only have one location, which is why they say pick up and drop off from there only.

Am guessing if you want long distance daily rates make sense though the 150 km per day is a constraint.

No intention of advertising, but I had checked Girikand's self-drive option in Pune last year itself... I figured that for outstation trips, it is a good option if your running is going to be less than 300km per day (which is the minimum charge). if you are interested, here is the link:

http://girikandcars.com/self_drive.html