Drivezy has launched its car sharing service in New Delhi. It currently has a fleet of 50 cars that can be rented through the Drivezy mobile app or website. Customers can choose from seven car models with prices starting from Rs. 49 per hour. The company plans to increase its fleet to 200 cars in the coming months.

Drivezy is an online platform where people can enlist their idle cars, scooters and motorcycles and rent them to customers on an hourly, weekly or monthly basis. The company claims to cater to over 1.5 million users in 11 cities including Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kochi, Mumbai, Pune, Mangalore, Mysore, Nagpur, Hubli and Manipal. It also claims to have more than 8,000 vehicles listed on its platform and in 2018, it added 10,000 scooters to its platform. 

Drivezy, which was formerly known as JustRide, began operations in August 2015. Since then, the company claims to have partnered with more than 4,000 owners. Unlike other ride sharing companies like Zoomcar, Revv and Bounce, Drivezy offers both cars and two-wheelers on a single platform.

Volvo has launched M - a new brand for its mobility services. With this wholly-owned and stand-alone entity, the Swedish carmaker plans to offer on-demand access to cars and other services via an app.

At present, Volvo operates a fleet of 1,700 cars in Sweden through the Sunfleet car-sharing company. Sunfleet was established over 20 years ago and has 500,000 annual transactions. It is expected to be fully integrated into M by 2019.

Volvo is also planning a proprietary software that will customise the offerings of M based on specific needs of the users. The company expects to serve 5 million users, across the various Volvo Group services within the next 10 years.

M will be headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden and a beta test for the brand will begin later this year.

Click here to join the discussion on ride-sharing

Click here to read why we think that ride-sharing won't work in India

Delhi-based cab aggregator Carzonrent has added car-pooling to its list of offered services by acquiring the Bangalore-based start-up, RidingO.

RidingO was started in 2013. It connects car owners with people looking for rides within the city. Using the internet or a mobile phone, a car owner can share empty seats in his car while commuting to and from a venue. It is an on-demand service where the car owner need not commit to ride sharing on a daily basis. The company claims to have a customer base of 8,500 users in Bangalore and clocks about 400 trips a day.

The amount for the buyout is undisclosed. Carzonrent is backed by firms like WestBridge Capital and BTS Advisors. It offers radio cabs under the brand name Easy cabs and self-drive rentals under the brand name Myles. It believes that the ride-sharing business will contribute over 75% of its business.

Source: Financial Express

We've reported that BlaBlaCar, an international car sharing service provider had developed keen interest in India. Eventually, it began operations in the country in January 2015. Based on a similar model, PoolCircle has been operating since 2013, based out of Bangalore. Pool Circle boasts of over 4,000 registered users with nearly 16,000 user activities per week.

It is a free to use, ride sharing network, available on web as well as iOS and android. Once registered, a user needs to set up one or more trips with the trip details - starting point, destination, time and whether they are looking for a car owner or a passenger. PoolCircle will find and display a list of other available matching users in the same area, after which, either user may contact the other for ride sharing.

A key challenge for the any ride sharing network in India, will be to persuade the users to use the application by instilling the requisite 'trust' in them. PoolCircle seems to have focused upon this aspect by introducing trust points. In other words, the more information a user shares about himself/herself, the more points they earn; this includes mobile phone number, profile picture, log in with social networking accounts as well as providing a corporate email ID.

Users can also select the connections or circles, they want to carpool with and each time they search for carpools on PoolCircle, they will only find those people in the search results.

In case of emergency, users can click a bell shaped icon on the app, which automatically sends their detailed location to 2 pre-saved contacts.

Apart from ride sharing, users can also learn more about public bus routes and timings.

Carpool can be a convenient and cost effective way to travel. Not only does it save users the headache of hiring a cab or autorickshaw, but also helps reduce congestion and pollution. To catch the discussion on carpooling click here.

BlaBlaCar, a French car pooling service, has started operations in India.

BlaBlaCar connects users travelling between cities to other each other using a smartphone application (currently available for Android and Apple devices). Through the app, users with similar destination can share a ride for a journey and expenses, thus travelling in a cost-effective manner.

It is mandatory for users to sign up using a Facebook account and their profiles are authenticated by BlaBlaCar. After the journey, the users can leave ratings for each other.

The BlaBlaCar app can be used to find a ride, contact the owner of the car through private messaging or phone and plan the journey. Car owners have to put up details of the departure and arrival points, date and time of departure and price per co-traveller. During the journey, the co-travellers have to pay the car owner.

There is also a function that allows a user to display how much he/she chats in the car. The three levels are:

• Bla: Not very chatty
• BlaBla: Enjoys a good chat
• BlaBlaBla: Won't shut up

This can help users choose their co-travellers according to their comfort levels.

American carmaker Ford has announced a Smart Mobility plan to use innovation to enhance connectivity, mobility, customer experience and development of autonomous vehicles. The company has also announced 25 mobility experiments which it will carry out around the world this year. Eight of these experiments will be conducted in North America, nine in Europe and Africa, seven in Asia and one in South America. With them, Ford aims to test transportation ideas for creating better customer experiences, more flexible user models and social collaboration that can reward customers.

Among the mobility experiments is a Share-Car project, which will be carried out in India. Ford is believed to be working with Zoomcar, the self-drive car rental company, in the city of Bangalore to test this concept. Ford claims the concept will allow small groups, such as co-workers, apartment dwellers and families to share a vehicle. With this experiment, Ford aims at helping consumers who cannot afford a car but want to own one. The company's researchers are planning to develop a model for managing vehicle ownership and scheduling.

Ford plans to address four problems which are challenging today's transportation model and limiting personal mobility, especially in urban areas. These problems include explosive population growth, expanding middle class, air quality and public health concerns, and changing customer attitudes and priorities. With the findings from the experiments, the company plans to create a new model of transportation and mobility.