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Disrupting Car Ownership | Greg Moran @ ZoomCar
143 Plays4 years ago
For the love of travelling, he would take international trips and immensely enjoy exploring diverse backgrounds. Growing up, he would travel to different destinations with his family, his first foreign trip being that to Italy.
Today, he has changed the trend of car ownership with a car subscription model providing tremendous appeal and flexibility to the millennials.
We are talking about Greg Moran, the co-founder and CEO of India’s first and largest self-drive mobility platform, Zoomcar. Zoomcar is present in 45+ cities across India.
After studying management from USC Marshall School of Business, LA, California, Greg Moran came to India. He disrupted the way India rents a car.
Being a foreigner with no roots in India, carving a niche for himself in a new country was no easy job for him.
He always wanted to do something big in business but didn’t have a clear idea of what it was. He went to the University of Pennsylvania and studied International Business. He shares some of the enjoyable moments from UPenn and how the four years impacted him and broadened his perspective.
Sustainability has always been a major part of his work ethic. He was the founder and president of the energy club at USC. Before going to business school, Greg worked as an investment banker with Fieldstone Private Capital Group. He also held the position in energy policy formulation at the City of New York.
He talks about his first impression of India, travelling around cities for research and business intelligence, staying at budget accommodations, and relishing the experience of building a business from scratch.
Tune in to this diverse conversation with Greg Moran and get to know his process behind building the first self-drive business in India.
Enjoy the episode!
Key takeaways from the episode:
- Building a successful mobility business in India.
- Academic Flexibility at an Ivy League school.
- Why is Urban Sustainability so crucial?
- Scaling up Zoomcar.
- What it is like to be a foreigner living and working in India.
Recommended
Transcript
Founder's Journey: Ivy League to India
00:00:21
Speaker
I'm Greg Moran. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Zoomcar.
00:00:32
Speaker
Have you heard about Agnes Kong Shah Boya Shingu? No, neither had I until I Googled Mother Teresa. Yes, that was her name before she came to India. And just like Agnes, today Akshay Dutt is talking to another foreigner who came to India to solve big Indian problems at scale. Greg Moran's journey from pursuing a Masters in Business from an Ivy League B-School to scaling up Zoonkar is a fascinating one. And it's a journey like no other.
00:01:01
Speaker
He is someone who is driven by a passion to solve global ecological problems and has decided to handle all the challenges of building a startup along with all the challenges of doing it in a country where he doesn't speak the native language and has no roots in. Listen to his candid conversation with Akshay Dutt to discover some unique outsider and insider perspectives about doing business in India.
00:01:29
Speaker
I would say certainly a healthy amount of travel. We had pretty diverse travel where we would always go on at least two or three trips a year, usually one trip international and then one or two trips domestically. From the time I was a pretty small kid, right from the time I was probably six or seven is when we would have consistent travel to these different destinations.
00:01:54
Speaker
So I still remember my first time abroad was when we went to Italy when I was eight. And so that was definitely very kind of opening and enlightening for me.
Educational Insights: US vs India
00:02:12
Speaker
When was your first time to India? Did your parents take you to India? No. So my first time in India was actually much, much later.
00:02:20
Speaker
No, that was actually when we were just starting our presume car. So yeah, actually I was at that point I was 26.
00:02:30
Speaker
Okay. By the time you were finishing up high school, did you know what you wanted to do with your life? No, no, certainly not. I mean, I think very few people, I believe at the age of 17 or 18, really know what they want to do. And you know, even if they kind of tell you what they want to do, you know, more often than not, that typically changes, right? I think, you know, at that point, I knew I was going to University of Pennsylvania, and I knew I was going to be
00:02:58
Speaker
doing something within sort of broader business law, politics, economics. I had this sort of loose fake idea that I was going to study those areas in terms of what that would actually mean or what that would actually translate to. I really didn't have much of an idea.
00:03:20
Speaker
You know i at that point i didn't honestly really know that many sort of occupations or jobs so to speak i knew i knew vaguely that you could be kind of like a lawyer or you can be a banker or you can maybe be a consultant you know i mean you know honestly at that point i didn't even really know what those careers actually meant.
00:03:41
Speaker
My parents came from more modest backgrounds and they were kind of much more like middle class type jobs. So I knew I didn't want to be an accountant and I knew I didn't want to be a tax accountant. I knew I didn't want to be a nurse or go into medical malpractice law. So I knew I didn't want to do for sure what my parents did. But apart from that, it was obviously still pretty open.
00:04:10
Speaker
So like in India, when you get into a college, you like pre-select what you want to do. Is it the same for the US also?
Transformative Experiences at UPenn
00:04:19
Speaker
Like you had to decide in advance what you want to do and apply for that specific program? Or is it more flexible where you can join and figure out what you want to do?
00:04:28
Speaker
No, no, it's much more the latter. As I'm sure you're aware, the US is not nearly that prescriptive. So yeah, I think you select the college you'll be in, as in the school, meaning that you have to kind of broadly select if you want to do engineering or business or arts and sciences, et cetera. So you have at a most macro level, you kind of select it that way. But you're not, you're certainly not selecting like a major.
00:04:57
Speaker
or a minor or a specific focus area. So it's at a very high level. And even that, there's flexibility and you can change as you go along.
00:05:09
Speaker
So what is it like studying at an Ivy school in the US? Is it like the 1% are your peers over there or what is that whole experience? Like those four years that you spent at UPenn? Right, right. I was incredibly fortunate to be at UPenn. I think it was obviously an amazing experience for probably a number of reasons. I think it's really
00:05:36
Speaker
Like with anything, whether you talk about being at a company that you really enjoy or being in a school you really enjoy, it's really about the people. So I think it's always about the people. And that's really the name of the game. And I think what I really enjoyed the most about being a school like Penn is that you're surrounded by really incredible folks across the board. I mean, obviously, it certainly goes out saying that everyone was very accomplished academically. I think that
00:06:06
Speaker
that was kind of more sort of table stakes. I think, yeah, there's a lot of schools where people are accomplished academically in the US. I think it's more that the well-roundedness of the people, I think the overall passion that was there, the overall attitude and sort of that sort of progressive element of
00:06:26
Speaker
really wanting to make a positive impact on society. I think that was the piece that was most infectious. And I think, you know, especially with my circle, my close circle of friends, I think that was obviously what, you know, was really always front and center. And I think that's where, you know, there's a very common, a sort of very, you know, clear sort of meaning of the minds.
00:06:46
Speaker
And I think that's what probably made it so special and valuable for me is that your closest friends and the learning that you have outside of the classroom.
Passion for Sustainability
00:06:57
Speaker
I think most people will tell you that in college, yeah, you obviously, there's maybe a little bit that you learn in the classroom, but if you look at the overall learning you have in college, probably 90% of that learning comes outside of the classroom. Okay. And how did your life view change during those four years?
00:07:17
Speaker
Well, I think you're exposed to a lot more, right? So I mean, growing up in the suburbs, I didn't grow up in the city. So when you grow up in the suburbs, it's a lot more insulated. So you have a much more narrow worldview. You don't have the same perspectives. When you're at a big school that has a lot of international folks, a lot of people from different backgrounds,
00:07:39
Speaker
very geographically diverse, you actually end up developing a much more sort of full-bodied understanding of various issues and it really paints a different perspective. Did your ambitions change? Did you get more goal clarity by the end of those four years?
00:08:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think so for sure because you're just exposed to a lot more, right? So I think you definitely have a much better pulse for what is out there and what is possible. And I think definitely the fact that you're surrounded by people from
00:08:16
Speaker
all over the world. There's so many different extracurriculars that you have an opportunity to pursue as well. And I think that more than anything is probably what pushes you in certain directions. And you're obviously exposed to people who are older than you, who are going down certain paths. And so you can obviously pick their brains and learn from them. So yeah, I think it's just the broader exposure that you have
00:08:45
Speaker
And the type of interactions that you have on a day-to-day basis is what makes anything so impactful and so special. So by the end of it, you wanted to be an investment banker? Like you joined like a PE firm?
00:09:02
Speaker
So Fieldstone is a PE firm, right? So that's an investment bank. So yeah, it's actually an investment bank within the broader energy infra space, clean tech space. So yeah, definitely it was something which was very appealing to me personally, because of the mission and the goal of the firm, which was really to play an active role in helping finance and transform the
00:09:28
Speaker
energy infrastructure spaces. So for me, it was never about investment banking or private equity. I mean, that was always just begins to an end, right? I mean, I don't think anyone, well, I guess I shouldn't say this, but I don't think anyone really comes out of school saying like, oh, I want to be an investment banker per se. I think it's more that, at least from my vantage point, I was always passionate about the industry. So I was passionate about sustainability. I was always passionate about the environment.
00:10:01
Speaker
Why were you passionate about sustainability? Yeah, I think with that, I sort of had already highlighted a little bit. I think it was for me, it was very clear that if you kind of zoom out for a minute, pull out and think about the really bigger picture, urban sustainability is by far the most important issue of our
Career Path: Investment Banking to Entrepreneurship
00:10:21
Speaker
time. Because if you don't have cities that are growing sustainably,
00:10:26
Speaker
Uh, you know, then you just have actual calamity on your hands where you have massive amounts of congestion. You have massive amounts of pollution. You have, you know, very, very poor planning development and then, you know, quality of life suffers dramatically. Um, and then everything starts to break down. Uh, you know, that's like the, uh, the logical reason, but what is the emotional reason that you got passionate about it?
00:10:52
Speaker
No, I mean, that is the reason, right? So I think it hits you over the head and it's so impactful, right? So that is the emotional reason, right? Like if you look at the statistics, I mean, just looking at the numbers, right? So think about cities like in India, where you have 14 out of the 15 most
00:11:11
Speaker
most polluted rather cities air quality wise. And then you kind of, whenever you read these statistics, you're also oftentimes seeing imagery around it. I think having visited a lot of these places, then it's something also even growing up in New York and being in the city, like you can see and New York is obviously a lot better than cities like say Bangalore or Delhi.
00:11:37
Speaker
in terms of pollution and congestion. But, you know, even being in New York, I mean, you can see visibly the effects. I mean, you can feel it. And, you know, I think growing up, I actually, there was a time at least where I had, I suffered from asthma, you know, in terms of, you know, bad air quality.
00:11:56
Speaker
And I think a lot of people in the big cities in the US would suffer from asthma because of the air quality and because of the pollution. So, yeah, I mean, I think that always is part of it. But I think you can just sort of see those statistics and it becomes painfully obvious. And whatever you read about broader forecasts around what's going to happen to water supply, what's going to happen to
00:12:25
Speaker
Um, the food supply, you know, what's going to happen, uh, you know, when it comes to energy supply. So all of that, uh, you know, it just kind of hits you over the head. Okay. So what kind of work were you doing at Fieldstone?
00:12:38
Speaker
So I was an investment banking analyst associate. And so I was doing a lot of financial modeling and a lot of detailed analysis around financial structures, et cetera. But I think for me, that was obviously the functional aspect of it. I took the time to learn a huge amount.
00:12:59
Speaker
about the renewable sector and looking at solar, wind, energy storage, et cetera. And so at the time we were building on a fledgling practice on the renewable side. And so I really took a liking, of course, to that. And I realized that that's where there could be a large impact. And so I started to focus really all of my time there on renewables and different deal opportunities out there.
00:13:26
Speaker
you know, try to be very active, very proactive in sourcing new business for the company. And so source a lot of new business for the company in terms of renewables. So and you also kind of were doing sales in a way then when you were getting new business, getting a new business. So it meant like you would network with people and kind of go and attend events and stuff like that. Like how does that happen in investment bank, like finding new clients?
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you would do all of that. I think there's, yeah, there's no one answer. But, you know, I think if you look at it, it's kind of an all of the above approach. I mean, a lot of it obviously comes from the existing network. And then, you know, there's opportunities to expand that network through, you know, different introductions, etc. But, you know, then, yeah, there's more sort of inorganic ways of
00:14:18
Speaker
going to different events and going to different conferences and seminars where you end up meeting a lot of folks. Some of it is just cold calling, to be honest. So it really depends. So I think it's always best if you have a warm introduction, if there's some sort of common intersection. I think wherever you can, you obviously try to avoid cold calling.
00:14:40
Speaker
But I think, you know, we had, you know, we were fortunate that we had a very good brand name in that space. So within the renewable, you know, clean tech space, everyone kind of knew Fieldstone. And I think that really helped, you know, because, you know, whenever you have a good brand name, you can always leverage and lean on that, and it begins a lot easier.
00:14:59
Speaker
Okay. And then you switched and joined like International Power America. So what was the role there? And why did you make the switch? Sure. So that was more of like a private equity type role where we were doing direct investing from the company's balance sheet. So yeah, this takes me way back. But yeah, I know. So that, you know, we were really looking at building out our own proprietary investment book.
00:15:27
Speaker
within energy space, especially within renewables. And so again, was doing a lot of transactions within wind, solar and storage. And we had a pretty broad global mandate geographically. So we were looking at the opportunities really across the board. So it was not just in Northeast or not just in the South or just in the US. So it was that way pretty diverse and broad.
00:15:55
Speaker
So that was actually a really great experience because since we were not advisors and we were directly handling that and dealing there, the learning was actually very significant. And since it's also an operating company, unlike an advisory shop, unlike an investment bank,
00:16:15
Speaker
And there's a lot of people who are technical. So there's a lot of engineers. There's a lot of people who are experts in the energy space, et cetera. So those people really will give you a huge amount of learning on the industry. And so that was, I think, for us also equally important.
00:16:35
Speaker
Okay, okay. And were you also traveling around the world at this time? Yeah, so we were. I mean, so yeah, I traveled for work and then also just obviously continued to travel for fun, for pleasure. So it was a combination. By this time, had you visited India?
00:16:52
Speaker
No, no, no. I visited India after I left that role. I visited India for the first time right before business school. So that was in 2000. So why did you make that decision to leave? I mean, you were enjoying here quite a bit and with both investment and operational exposure. So why leave and go to a business school?
00:17:17
Speaker
Well, I knew that I wanted to kind of get into either venture capital or go and do something on my own. So I think that was something which was very clear to me from 2010, 2011. I knew I was kind of trending on that path.
00:17:35
Speaker
And playing venture capital, that was always appealing because it was kind of getting into the technology aspect of it. And I think I started to shift more when I was in international power. I think what I realized is that learning about the industry and going deep on the industry in terms of the technical aspects of it, the market aspects of it, that was really what was fascinating. So really having a depth around the knowledge of the industry was what was most appealing.
00:18:04
Speaker
And so I think that's where I felt, you know, either, you know, going and doing something on my own in the space and the broader sort of sustainability space, or doing something on the venture capital side, you know, reduction, the most rewarding. And, you know, I think
Entering the Indian Market
00:18:19
Speaker
I realized quickly that
00:18:21
Speaker
venture capital at least, probably it was not really the right time to entry. I think it's much, much better to kind of do that when you're a little bit older in life. So yeah, I think if you have a lot of experience, if you have practical real world experience, it becomes a lot more impactful to actually be a strong venture capitalist and a strong investor.
00:18:45
Speaker
Sorry, I felt that that was something to be looked at much later in life, much later. And focusing on the current here and now was going to be much more impactful.
00:18:59
Speaker
Okay. And so once you quit International Power America, this is where you went to India. So this was like a couple of months off you took to travel like that. Yes, before business school. Yeah, I think, you know, in the US and I think in India, it's the same as that, you know, typically people take some downtime between, you know, their job and sort of business school.
00:19:21
Speaker
For me, I was, again, fortunate and lucky that I had this opportunity. But I wanted to... Would you remember about that trip to India, which you took? Yeah, I remember everything. So it was pretty hard. It was like the first impression, as soon as you deborded. Yeah, yeah. Well, it was pretty crazy, actually, because for me, when I actually got out,
00:19:50
Speaker
I landed in the old Mumbai airport. So this was before the international terminal was really built out. So this was 2011. So the international terminal was just getting completed at that point, T2 in Mumbai. And so I flew Air India. And so Air India was pretty,
00:20:16
Speaker
Pretty brutal. At that point I wasn't flying business class, so that was a pretty painful 14 hour flight. Long haul for sure. I remember when I got out,
00:20:33
Speaker
It was funny because I was staying, I had a rough itinerary for what I wanted to do for the three months plot. What was the itinerary? Well, it was just in terms of cities, right? So I was going to go to 25 cities. Wow, 25 cities, amazing. Yeah, so I wanted to do two tours in Bangalore, two tours in Mumbai, Delhi.
00:21:00
Speaker
and some of the big cities. But yeah, so the idea was to start in Mumbai, and then from there, go to Pune, go to Hyderabad, go to Bangalore, Chennai.
00:21:13
Speaker
go to Goa and then kind of circle back to Mumbai and then go north from there. So I think that was the basic idea. When I got into Mumbai, and I think I was obviously going on a pretty tight budget because it was one, it was a pretty long trip. So either way, it was going to be pretty expensive.
00:21:32
Speaker
And I knew I was going back to business school, so I kind of had to save money. So I was going on a pretty frugal budget. So I was staying in all sorts of, and this was before really Airbnb got big in India. And so I was staying in all these sort of like three star hotels. This is obviously well before OYO started as well. So I was staying in all these like budget hotels.
00:21:56
Speaker
which were, you know, honestly pretty bad, you know, not very nice accommodations. Sure. And, you know, I think the challenge is a lot of these people, like the places, like the guys that didn't really speak Reagan English, you know, and there were a lot of issues, like a lot of places didn't have A.C. that was proper. A lot of them had like, you know, a lot of, you know, mosquitoes and, you know, there's a lot of issues that way. So like when I first got to Mumbai, when I landed, I remember,
00:22:25
Speaker
It was the middle of the night. It was like 1 a.m. maybe. So, yeah, pretty late. And I got out. I had a big suitcase and then I had two packs because I was going to be traveling for three months. And, yeah, I actually remember I couldn't get a cab so I had to take a rickshaw from the airport.
00:22:46
Speaker
And yeah, I was taking a rickshaw from there to Andere East. So my hotel was in Andere East, and it was a pretty small budget hotel. And so obviously, this was before Google Maps was big in the city, in the country. And so yeah, then the rickshaw drivers, of course, obviously don't really speak much English.
00:23:06
Speaker
So it was pretty hard. And then, you know, this the hotel, like, you know, the guy, like, there was like, not a proper number for the hotel. And so the guy that Richard O'Dara can reach him. And then, you know, he didn't really know where it was. So as we ended up, and it was very tough, because I had all my bags, so I couldn't like just get out and get a new like, hella new,
00:23:25
Speaker
car or rickshaw cab on the street. So I ended up taking like an hour and a half to find the hotel. It was a crazy situation. So this was in the middle of the summer and this was in April. Were you stressing out or was it like a fight? No, at that point, well, I mean, not really stressing out. I knew at some point we would find it. I mean, it was just going to take time.
00:23:52
Speaker
I think, yeah, there are obviously a number of those experiences over the first few weeks and, yeah, I realized that you should have to be patient. I mean, you definitely learn patience pretty quickly in those situations because, yeah, I mean, stressing out or something like that, yeah, I never, I mean, look, I'm not, yeah, personally, I'm not the kind of person who stresses out really about anything.
00:24:14
Speaker
that way. I kind of take it all in stride. You know, because I know that, you know, that's, that's not productive. It's not logical. It's not constructive. So it never really leads anywhere. So there's no point of doing that. I think, yeah, you have to kind of, you know, really relish the experience. And yeah, the way to think about it is, you know, it's going to be a really good story one day. And so I think that's true. That's all. Okay. What are the stories from that first trip in India?
00:24:43
Speaker
stuff that is still vivid in your mind? Yeah, you know, there's I mean, there's dozens of dozens of stories. I mean, I think, you know, certainly, you know, it was, you know, I think what was really cool about the trip was, you know, it was an opportunity to obviously do a huge amount of business diligence on ground.
00:25:03
Speaker
But you can kind of mix that with being a tourist. Did you come to India with an agenda that you want to explore it as a business destination? Yeah, so coming in, I knew that I wanted to do Jim Carr. So at that point... Oh really? So while you were at International Power before joining B-School, you already knew that you want to start something in India.
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah. So I knew that we wanted to do something in the transport space and wanted to do something in the, you know, kind of the consumer facing mobility side, you know, within your personal mobility. And yeah, that was definitely, you know, something which was front and center for us. And the trip is really confirmatory due diligence. What do you mean by V? Like you? My co-founder and I. Okay. Okay. And how did you meet your co-founder?
00:25:58
Speaker
We were friends from school, undergrad, and then we were buddies from there. So like India was one of the options that you were exploring or you were clear that okay, we want to do mobility in India.
00:26:12
Speaker
Well, I think we were clear in India, and then I think we were pretty clear on mobility in India as well. As I think I mentioned, if you want to do something in renewable energy, broader sustainability on the power infrastructure side, it's pretty tough because it's a long slog, it's a long haul, very expensive, very slow approvals, procedures, just not something that you can really do in a very short period of time.
00:26:43
Speaker
And I think that was really for us, at least what kind of came out. And so, yeah, we wanted to make sure that we were going to be able to do something that can scale. So I think that's why we did. But I mean, like, how did the idea of India come into your mind? Like, I mean, you have never visited India, you know, how does it how did that idea originate that, OK, I'll do this in India?
00:27:11
Speaker
Yeah, well, no, as I mentioned, it was something where I had a lot of professional experience in India in my earlier jobs, where there were a lot of deals and a lot of opportunities that we looked at in India. So yeah, that was for like three years, right? So three years, four years. I think that really helped. And that obviously was an important driving factor, motivating factor. Also, as I think I mentioned, at UPenn,
00:27:38
Speaker
I ended up meeting a lot of friends, meeting a lot of guys and good buddies from India. Even from the time I was in college, I had a chance to meet with their families as well when they would visit. Their dads or moms would talk about India as a destination, as a commercial opportunity as well.
00:27:58
Speaker
So I think that it was certainly helping and conspiring and influencing me in that direction, which I think was good. And then finally, even coming back to when I was in school, I also studied a lot about India, about history, political economy, even the food. So all of that was certainly there in a favorable way.
00:28:25
Speaker
Okay, so your co-founder David was also traveling with you when you came to India? No, actually he was not. So he was in the US due to his job constraints at the time. But so I ended up doing all that digging and being around myself. So yeah, that was also something which made it on some levels very exciting.
00:28:47
Speaker
Because when you're traveling alone, it's very empowering, right? You have to kind of just go and make something happen. Right. As opposed to being with someone else. So there's a different level of pro-activeness. So this is like a reconnaissance mission, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's, as I said there, it's, you know, kind of a lot of fact-finding, a lot of diligence, etc. And that was, you know, for three or four months.
00:29:12
Speaker
And what was your takeaway at the end of it? Did you think that yes, it's doable? Did you form a thesis on how you should do it and stuff like that?
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I think definitely. So, I mean, more than anything, I would say it really motivated me in a big way to kind of get after it. And, you know, it really strengthened, I would say, you know, really fortified the conviction around what we were doing. And, you know, basically said that, you know, this is your barking.
00:29:45
Speaker
you're barking up the right tree, you know, you should be just going more, you know, at an all out pace and go your head first and go 1000 miles an hour to make this happen. So I think that's really kind of what came out pretty quickly. Yeah.
00:30:04
Speaker
And so you joined USC Marshall School of Business. And so when you joined, you were already clear that, OK, you're going to start a mobility business in India. So then obviously, that experience in the B-School would all be through those lens only, I'm guessing.
00:30:23
Speaker
Right. Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. And, you know, again, there I was fortunate that, you know, we had, I think, like 10 or 11 people from our year who were from India were in the school with us in the class and maybe 220, 230 kids in the class in each year. So yeah, so a decent number. And yeah, I mean, it was it was something where I actually always felt that
00:30:48
Speaker
They were very helpful and certainly insightful. A lot of connections I ended up making with the community in India actually came from them. In fact, one of them ended up investing and became a good friend. It's something which definitely was useful and was very helpful. I think when you're starting out a venture,
00:31:15
Speaker
I actually recommend this to a lot of people who are aspiring to be entrepreneurs, but one of the best times to start is actually in business school because you just have a little bit more flex, a little bit more time, quite frankly. So if you're going to start, starting in your first year of business school or second year of business school is a great time to start. I think the only downside to that is sometimes if you need to invest money or put in money. So a lot of startups or almost all startups, in fact, are bootstrapped.
00:31:44
Speaker
to start, and almost 100% of startups have founders put in money, right? So that's there in almost every case that I've ever seen. Ranges, of course, can range from 5 lakhs to 5 crores. But yeah, so it's something which, of course, you want to do. And it's actually a big red flag if you don't. So yes, that's why I
00:32:10
Speaker
99% of people do to some level. And yeah, so that's why it's a good time to typically do it in college or in undergrad or graduate rather, whether it's MBA or master's or whatever you're doing. So I think for me, it was obviously an MBA course, two-year course, but I ended up sticking around only for a year and dropping out after that.
00:32:32
Speaker
The first year was really crazy because I was working full steam in school and I started the energy club and I was the president and I was rallying there and doing a lot of team tech
Challenges in Launching Zoomcar
00:32:45
Speaker
work. And part of that was kind of like a hedge in the event that Zoomcar wasn't working out. And then overnight,
00:32:53
Speaker
because of the time difference, like basically from like 11 p.m. onwards, I would work on Zoom and I would call people in India, I would be doing a lot of different work. And yeah, that was really tough because, you know, you would just, you know, you'd be exhausted because you're working a full day, you're working a full 14-hour day.
00:33:14
Speaker
And then you're coming back and working, you know, six hours, seven hours, eight hours. Wow. You would sleep like two, three hours a night consistently. And yeah, you just, I mean, that's the way it works. And so yeah, I did that for the whole year. And so yeah, it was, it was, it was something where it was, it was really intense. It was pretty hardcore. I mean, uh,
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, I would say it's kind of like I still remember I'm a big fan of Tesla. And I always remembered hearing Elon Musk post some of their problems when they were scaling up their Model 3 where he was like, it was really, really, I just remember he was saying it was like really, really hardcore and he was like sleeping on the factory floor. And I remember I was like, well, I think that was maybe like 2017 or 18 for those guys maybe years ago.
00:34:06
Speaker
But I always remembered, I was hearing, I must say that, I was like, I can obviously, he's an unbelievably successful entrepreneur, but I could totally relate to that because I wasn't sleeping in the factory floor, but I might as well have been doing that because it was just an insane, it was just a totally insane experience for that year as you were starting off. And so I think so many entrepreneurs have that experience.
00:34:29
Speaker
I think for me, it was probably a little unique because I was having to do it remotely, you know, phoning a different country. And then, you know, at that point, again, you know, connectivity, it wasn't like you had WhatsApp, right? So it was all on Skype. And it was like, you know, terrible connection. Like you were calling from a Skype number to an Indian mobile number. And this was like way before Reliance Geo came. You know, this has been irritable and pretty pathetic.
00:34:55
Speaker
penetration in the country in 2011, 2012. So, yeah, it was very tough. It was very, very tough. I mean, you know, had I known it was going to be so tough, you know, I might not have done it. It's probably good that I didn't know it was so tough going into it.
00:35:15
Speaker
So what were you doing in that one year on the Zoom project? Like, did you narrow down that you want to start as a car rental service or like, you know, tell me about how the idea evolved over that year to where you finally left B school and got on the ground. Yeah. So I think remarkably little changed actually from the time, you know, so prior to India, you know, we had already prior to visiting India rather.
00:35:40
Speaker
We had already kind of joined out the entire business plan. Everything was kind of put together. What was the original plan that you'll purchase cars and then like rent them out? Well, I mean, to be honest, purchasing cars was never really, I mean, it wasn't like we were prescriptive where it's like we're going to buy cars or we're not going to buy cars. We wanted to just acquire, I mean, ideally, like initially, we figured we could aggregate them and then not buy cars.
00:36:10
Speaker
Ideally, look, if you can obviously avoid buying cars, you can just onboard them on the platform. Aggregate them? How? Like there was no, I mean, so and I'll tell you what I'm confused with. Like say someone like an Uber could aggregate because they were already taxi service providers, but India didn't have a car rental industry asset. So what would you be aggregating? I mean, you were basically in the rental space only, right? Or were you looking at a
00:36:38
Speaker
shared taxi, like an Uber kind of a... No, no, no. So we were always looking at something on the personal mobility side where you were going to drive yourself. So that was always the case. We looked at the taxi market and the ride-hailing space. At that point, Uber was coming up in the US. And I think we never believed that model worked.
00:36:59
Speaker
And I think we are proven correct. So I think Uber and Lyft have obviously been failed companies. There's been none of the right-hand companies globally have worked. Ola has obviously totally pivoted their business and basically are shutting down there.
00:37:14
Speaker
the ride-hailing business, right? So they're hardly doing anything out there. Now they're pivoted to be an electric scooter manufacturer. So yeah, so it shows that I think we, you know, I'm not, not to tutor on horns there, but I think we had a good amount of prescience knowing that that model was really not going to succeed long-term. And yeah, I think that's, that's proven out today.
00:37:39
Speaker
So, I think in these terms of profitability. So, I think the point there was, you know, for us, these personal mobility was always the answer because it was always going to be cheaper. It was always going to be less costly. It was going to
00:37:54
Speaker
They always have a more profitable market opportunity. So that was something which made it, I think, always more appealing. And so- How would you get the supply in place? Because there wasn't any existing car rental agencies in India that you could aggregate and- Well, no. I mean, that wasn't really true, right? So there was always a lot of small-time mom-and-pop tours and travels guys. So initially we were thinking we would just aggregate from those guys or aggregate from individuals, actually.
00:38:24
Speaker
But then I think what we realized early on was that the regulation was actually pretty tight and was not allowing for those type of aggregation models. So ultimately, we ended up landing on the whole purchasing of vehicles because there was just no other alternative. So that was, obviously, I don't think anyone is going to go in and say, I want to have to spend more money and do more effort to get inventory.
00:38:52
Speaker
If you had an option, I don't think anyone would necessarily advocate for that option first. So I think, yeah, it's more, yeah, and justifying the means and kind of as long as the cat catches the mouse. So I think that's really more important for us. I think, you know, what we realized was that
00:39:14
Speaker
you know, going and buying cars and going with the license and getting that whole process, it was going to take longer to do that. But it would also be a competitive advantage once you kind of got through it because one, you need licensing, right? You need capital and all that. So yeah, so that was I think kind of the reason overall.
00:39:35
Speaker
But did you have money to buy cars or you did an angel round or something? As I mentioned, we put in some of our own money. And then we also raised a couple hundred thousand dollars or a couple of crores.
Funding and Partnerships
00:39:49
Speaker
We had raised at that point as we were starting the business. And that allowed us to kind of get access to more cars. And so we started off with just seven cars in Bangalore.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, I still remember we had four, four Infigos and three Mahindra Scorpios. And I still remember the license plate numbers, you know, 1148 to 1154. So yeah, yeah, so I still remember everything about the first vehicle delivery where actually it was, we actually did a home delivery to the customer who was in his office in Coromoma. And he handed us a bag of cash
00:40:33
Speaker
Yeah, all of this was, of course, totally, you know, this is, of course, very clean. This is all legitimate thing. Yeah, yeah. This is funny because it's a bag of cash. I think it was
00:40:47
Speaker
like 13,000 rupees or something because we didn't have a functioning payment gateway at the time. We hadn't even gone live with the website, the integration yet. So it was kind of like a pre-sale. So the only thing we could do is take cash because there were no ways you couldn't take like a remote digital credit
00:41:05
Speaker
There were those payment, they were in mobile past systems at that point. They were just launched in 2012. But the problem out there was that they were not reliable and they were very expensive. So it was not very- How did you actually get the initial things done? Is it easy for a person who's not an Indian citizen to start a private limited company and buy cars and stuff like that?
00:41:33
Speaker
No, no, of course not. Very difficult. At that point, it was extremely difficult. Now and today, it's a little bit easier. It's still not that easy for foreigners. But no, it was brutal because the process for us, so we actually set up largely the Indian entity from the US, which made it even tougher because of the whole KYC issue. I remember probably having to send my passport, my visa, my photos seven or eight times.
00:42:02
Speaker
At least many more. I remember because I was in Boston for a summer working between first and second year before I left. And that was really painful because I had to go and work with FedEx and UPS.
00:42:20
Speaker
The post office there so many times, I must have visited the post office like six or seven times. And over the course of like three weeks maybe. And yeah, I was like, yeah, no one should ever have to visit the post office ever. It's not a good experience. It's like going to the DMV. I mean,
00:42:40
Speaker
which is like the RTO in the US. So it was like no one wants to go to the RTO or the STA office. And so same thing goes like the US Post Office. So yeah, it's pretty terrible. But yeah, you have to do what you have to do. There's no shortcuts around it.
00:43:01
Speaker
I think the difficulties in all of those logistical setups for us early on, again, it gave us a lot of patience and it really taught us that as an entrepreneur, you're 90% of what you do, especially in the first one or two years.
00:43:17
Speaker
It's not glamorous at all. There's nothing glamorous about having to run to the post office seven times in three weeks and sit there for hours and go and call people in India for hours to get a signature or get documents in place. It was really for the first 12 months of even operating the business.
00:43:38
Speaker
It was like one logistical mess after another, like nothing even tied to business. It was just like admin work where you had to do like the first year of our business. I was like so bogged down. Like, you know, when people like asked me, like, how did you spend your time? And I spent like, I was like, I spent over half my time on admin.
00:43:56
Speaker
And they're like, that's insane, right? No one would ever choose. Why would you do that? It's not good for any business. So it's a major distraction. It's a major dissuading point for any entrepreneur, especially a local Indian entrepreneur as well. So yeah, it's just not good. I mean, I think the government now has
00:44:21
Speaker
They made some strides, but they claim to be very entrepreneur friendly. But that's just wrong. This is not the case. The government's not entrepreneur friendly. Yeah, it's a joke, right? I mean, how can you, if you come out with rules saying that you're going to have 1% GST tax through cash, right? Or if you even think about making startups pay GST, at that point, that or service tax,
00:44:51
Speaker
I mean, how could you possibly do that? If you're just starting off and you're just starting making revenue, why would you ever have to pay tax when you're just starting? It doesn't make any sense. So the point is that, yeah, the policy regime is just very off.
00:45:09
Speaker
The Indian government operates with a trust deficit. So, for example, if they were to make things more relaxed, then the biggest fear would be that people would manipulate and take advantage and find loopholes.
00:45:24
Speaker
you know, someone has an existing business which is doing well. He doesn't want to pay GST. He just starts a new company, claims it's a startup. So, you know, there are those trust deficit issues as a, I mean, in the society as a whole, you know, until they don't get sold.
00:45:40
Speaker
probably the ease of doing business will remain. Yeah, but of course, I mean, the alternative is much worse, right? Like, you know, just, I mean, the point is that the bad actors are, you know, 1%. So the point is that, you know, even if you have bad actors, you know, so, even if you have leakage, I mean, so the real argument in, you know, okay, so what? I mean, it's 1%, what's the big deal? The growth that you have from, you know, the 99%
00:46:07
Speaker
just totally washes out that leakage that's there from the one or two percent. That's been proven time and time again everywhere globally. It's just not good logic. It's just not well-founded. It's not based on any data, which is, I think, the problem. Anyway, not to digress, but I think that's something which
00:46:31
Speaker
is a systemic issue. And yeah, it made it really, really frustrating for us as we were building out the business. So you landed in India in mid-2012 with a couple of crores and with the incorporation done. So then what did you do next? Like you bought the cars and you launched a website and started generating demand?
00:46:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, yeah, it wasn't quite so easy. I mean, yeah, it was more the first three, four months, it was all just a race to get sort of the licensing and the permitting and figuring out, you know, those modalities. You were to get a commercial license for these cars? Yeah, eventually. Initially, though, it was working with a partner who already had a license because
00:47:17
Speaker
It was clear that there was no way for us to obtain a license straight away. But we needed to have all sorts of pretty wild requirements, which we just didn't have. So yeah, we realized that it was going to be pretty tough and a bit of a slog.
00:47:33
Speaker
So you like got into a like a rental arrangement or something with that partner where you would pay him a rental for the cars and like something like that. Right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. It's basically a sort of a rental model type. It was almost like an operating lease to this individual to the small terms and Chavez player. So we worked with him exclusively for 12 month free. Okay. Okay. And how did you generate demand?
00:48:01
Speaker
Yeah, initially we generated demand just through really strong word of mouth. We didn't spend marketing money at all for the first two years. We didn't invest anything for the first years. So it was all about just creating that positive buzz, word of mouth in the market, a lot of referrals.
00:48:20
Speaker
And then, you know, it spread that way. And, you know, we did some, you know, ground activation, so to speak at, you know, petro bunks or diesel bunks. That way, you know, it definitely potentially makes sense. And then we had a couple of, you know, strong alliances where, you know, it helped us kind of build more credibility, I would say. Yeah. So initially, what was it? Was it like an on-demand car?
00:48:50
Speaker
Just book it and it reaches your home? Or did you have to go to some pickup point and pick it up the way it is in the West?
00:48:58
Speaker
Early on, it was a self-pickup model where you had to go into one of these distributed parking facilities, which was going to be across the city. That was actually always the focus. By the end of 2012, you had seven cars and you were in Bangalore. How did that proceed? By the end of 2013, where were you at?
00:49:23
Speaker
Right, right. Yeah, so it was pretty wild the first year. As I said, there's a huge amount of time to spend on general admin and trying to get all of these licenses and approvals in place and just registrations in place. So leaving that notwithstanding, but I think the focus for us was on getting our primary self-drive permit
00:49:49
Speaker
which ended up coming in the first quarter of 2014. So that was like a 12 month plus process. So that was the that was a big one for us because we knew that that was the limitation to our supply growth.
Product Expansion: Rentals to SaaS
00:50:03
Speaker
So without having that in place, there was no way that we were going to be able to grow supply because our existing our first partner, the tours and travels company that we were working with, he had a constraint
00:50:17
Speaker
and a limitation where he couldn't take cars beyond a certain point. So we kind of took him to 50 cars, just sort of 50 cars, and we couldn't go and add any more cars with him.
00:50:28
Speaker
And so, yeah, that was the constraint. So I think ultimately it was just about getting that permit so that we could ultimately purchase cars on our own. This must have been like a capital intensive scale up. You would have needed to raise a lot of funding since you were purchasing the cars. Yeah. So initially it was because also you couldn't really get that much debt, right? So I mean, it was always on debt. So there was never
00:50:58
Speaker
There's never a doubt that you need to have significant debt because there's no way that you can buy cars on equity. That's just too much money and it's just not very productive. It was definitely something where my finance background helped a lot because I had expertise actually in debt.
00:51:20
Speaker
I had done a lot of structured debt, a lot of project finance debt, so asset impact debt. So non-recourse debt was something I knew quite well. And I think that also probably is one of the reasons why we're able to get so much debt is because I actually had a personal professional background in that beforehand. How soon did you tap the market for funds, be it debt or VC funding?
00:51:47
Speaker
Well, they're very different, right? So, you know, VC funding, we, you know, we're always talking to folks in the very beginning. So, you know, that was something where we had
00:51:57
Speaker
individual investors come in and then, you know, gradually institutions, small institutions and much larger. So, I mean, our first sort of VC, you know, a VC PE investor was Sequoia and that was the end of 2014. So that was about six years back. And then from there... How did that happen? Like your skills previously of which you learned while you were at Fieldstone of getting new business, like they must have helped you here in terms of networking and opening doors of VCs
00:52:27
Speaker
and stuff like that? Yeah, I think it certainly helped to a point. I think it's more about just getting your foot in the door and then I think from there you kind of take it ahead. But it's really, for me, having done a lot of, as you said, sales type work in investment banking where you kind of understand how to
00:52:50
Speaker
bring in different relationships into the mix. So certainly it was easier, I think, maybe to navigate that landscape and understand it a little bit better. But having said that, at the end of the day, that's just the beginning. It's just a starting line. So it's really about what you do from there that matters the most. And I think it's always been about execution. So the game has always been execution.
00:53:20
Speaker
Okay. So you got Sequoia in as your first big institutional investor. And then like, who were the others? So over time, we brought in other institutions like Nokia, Nokia Growth Partners, our crowd, Ford Motor Company, Mahindra. So these names came in over the years. And then more recently, like Sony, so Sony Ventures, which is one of the
00:53:47
Speaker
I mean, that's their venture arm of Sony. So we had a mix of, I would say, financial semesters, VCs, PEs, and then combining that with OEMs. So it's always been a pretty balanced overall endeavor, I would say.
00:54:03
Speaker
Was it tough getting money from Mahindra? I mean, considering that Mahindra is like an old school Indian business conglomerate who typically does not do like, I mean, you know, Indian business conglomerates have not typically been doing like VC funding, startup funding, though now they have. But at that time, it must have been like you must have been one of the earliest ones.
00:54:28
Speaker
Yeah, so they hadn't done too much. So I think there were a few examples before us. But I think it obviously depends what group company you're talking about, because we were actually in M&M, we were on the automotive side. So it was a little bit different. But yeah, I think it helped that Ford actually had done an investment earlier. And so even at that point of time, Ford and Mahindra were
00:54:55
Speaker
working on this broader alliance, this strategic partnership. So I think that also helped on many levels. Yeah. You got to meet Anand Mahindra also. That's right. Yeah. So I met Anand a few times. So that was obviously, you know, certainly quite an experience. So not something you'll ever sort of forget. I mean, his office alone is pretty incredible. I mean, we met
00:55:19
Speaker
I still remember the first time you met was if you're familiar with Bombay, you know, it's actually all the way down in South Bombay, you know, right near actually right behind the Taj Hotel, the Taj Mahal Hotel where the unfortunately where the attacks were in 2008. So yes, it's basically right behind that there's a little lane, there's an alley.
00:55:42
Speaker
uh, if you will. And, you know, Mahindra has, you know, their old school, like really old corporate office there, uh, where I guess the, the broader Mahindra family had sat, uh, had sat, uh, over a couple of generations and, you know, that, that whole area is built up by the British years, a long time ago in the 1800s.
00:56:01
Speaker
But yeah, so that was a really beautiful building, like the super old British colonial building. And it was kind of transformed. It was like a two-story, three-story building. So it's all kind of like low-slung buildings that are really old.
00:56:15
Speaker
uh, really nicely maintained, you know, it's kind of restored. Um, and yeah, the office itself was like stunning. You, you walk in, it's, um, you know, it's kind of like, uh, you know, Tata has a very similar, uh, office. I think it's at the Bombay house, uh, but where all of the top management sits and, you know, it's the same thing here where on, uh, personally sits and, uh, yeah, the, on the office, it was just like super over the top. It was like incredibly nice. Um, and so, yeah, I remember, you know, waiting for,
00:56:43
Speaker
maybe about 20 minutes outside with his assistant and then finally getting ushered in. I ended up being in a pretty long meeting. It was probably 45, 50 minutes, which I think for guys like that, usually it's a pretty long meeting. It was good. I got to hear his vision, his thought process for the group and how he was thinking about
00:57:09
Speaker
some of these new trends. And I think it was clear that he had, at a high level, at a broad level, understanding the direction, the vision they wanted to take Mahindra in. But I think in terms of double clicking on more of the implementation strategy, I think that was where it was obviously still getting fleshed out. I think that's where he felt that
00:57:31
Speaker
partnership, investment partnership with Zumgar potentially could help lubricate that and facilitate that broader vision one level down. So I think that was probably the motivating factor behind it, I would say.
00:57:51
Speaker
And so, you know, like, tell me about how your revenue has kind of grown over the years. Like, what kind of revenue did you do in the first year and how has that shaped up over the years? Oh, well, yeah, in the first year, we, I mean, we did like, you know, around a million dollars or so. Yeah, so it's quite, quite nominal, quite de minimis.
00:58:13
Speaker
And so that consistently grew over time as we added more and more vehicles and saw more and more transactions, more and more customers coming through the door. So yeah, for us, I mean, the prime way of generating revenue is from having more units by having more vehicles. So that was ultimately the name of the game. The more vehicles you have, the more revenue you can generate. So it was only the game of how many vehicles you can amass.
00:58:45
Speaker
So what kind of revenue do you do now? Are you at liberty to tell us? I mean, we can't really talk about the exact numbers, but we've crossed 75 million of annual revenue. And so we're north of that. And then obviously, I mean, with COVID, COVID has been an interesting situation because we were obviously locked down for a number of months. But we've seen a very strong bounce back from post-COVID.
00:59:12
Speaker
Okay, okay. So and your product itself has also evolved. So initially you started with only cell phone vehicles, but you know, tell me about that evolution, how the product and services that you were offering, how they evolved over the years.
00:59:28
Speaker
Uh, yeah, so we have a couple of product offerings now today. I mean, when we started, it was just one product. It was about short-term access. So hourly, daily, uh, rental. Uh, so you can take a vehicle for a couple of hours, take it for a couple of days. So short-term access was the first product for the first couple of years. Uh, then sort of 2017, 18 came along and we realized that there was a.
00:59:49
Speaker
a huge unmet market opportunity there and need in the long-term access market. And that's where we wanted to push ahead with a vehicle digital subscription. And so we created the first long-term access product in India for personal mobility by creating 100% digitized car subscription and have that as a service. And so we also introduced alongside that sort of what we believed at the time, and still believe that for sure today,
01:00:16
Speaker
Is that like a killer app feature, which is actually allowing the individual subscribers to share back their vehicles on the Zoom car short-term rental platform when the car is idle, when the car is not in use. And so as a result, this whole shareback dynamic, it really, it's more like an Airbnb marketplace type. So it's more of a managed marketplace type. You're too excited there.
01:00:40
Speaker
And so this actually is quite powerful. Because what it does is, at the end of the day, it reduces the monthly obligation on the subscriber. So it brings it down by 50%, 60%, 70%, depending on how much, how many days the subscriber is actually listing and sharing the card.
01:01:02
Speaker
Okay. So who would go for a long term subscription? Like, so you're saying this is an alternative to buying a car, like don't buy a car instead, subscribe to a car. Yes. So the idea is, you know, actually, you don't need to buy a car, you can subscribe. Well, I think if you really look at it, it's really about, you know, having something out there, you know, which is going to be
01:01:25
Speaker
very, very convenient, very, very flexible and very affordable because you don't need to do the maintenance, like Zoomcar would do the maintenance. Yeah, I think it's not just that. I mean, if you look at it, there's the whole, you know, the fact that service maintenance is included, insurance is included.
01:01:42
Speaker
uh, the, the taxation on that's included. Uh, so there's, there's really nothing else, uh, or, and above, uh, the, the car ownership are like, uh, kind of outsourced to zoom car. And I just have a car, uh, yeah, exactly. Yeah. The whole idea is that, um, you know, this is really, you know, outside of that, uh, you know, so auspice, so you, you don't have to worry about anything that's going to be ancillary miscellaneous out of pocket.
01:02:10
Speaker
And so, more than anything, that's actually quite powerful for folks. Okay. And this you can also save money when you rent it out, when it's lying idle. That's right. That's right. Yeah, the whole idea is that it's super efficient that way. You actually can save and it's more in sync with your usage pattern.
01:02:32
Speaker
But if the car is in my driveway, then do I need to drive it to someplace to rent it out? I know that's the beauty of it is that it's super, super convenient where individual renters can actually go and pick up the vehicle at your house. And there's a keyless entry system through your smartphone. So the smartphone actually unlocks the car.
01:02:53
Speaker
So you don't need to be physically present. You don't need to be there handing over keys. You don't need to have, there's no paperwork. The card doesn't need to be moved and reallocated or relocated. So that way it's much, much easier. When did you implement this keyless system? That's been there almost from the beginning. So it was there in, you know, initially there was a version one of it that was there for some time.
01:03:21
Speaker
Unfortunately, the technical aspects of it didn't work out that well. So we kind of shut that and then relaunched it in 2016. So it's been really- In-house? Yeah, in-house, in-house. So initially, we were working with third parties. We realized that that was not scalable. There were a lot of challenges on the tech infra side. So we realized that we had to bring those capabilities in-house. And that's actually now a precursor to kind of one of our existing, one of our current business lines, which is around enterprise SaaS.
01:03:51
Speaker
So our next product has been around enterprise SaaS and really focusing on mobility technology as a service. What is this product? Tell me more about it. I'm sure you would have seen ZMS, Zoom Core Mobility Services. So this is our B2B enterprise SaaS offering. And so we effectively offer two core products. One is vehicle connectivity as a service, so IoT as a service.
01:04:18
Speaker
around like real-time driver scoring, vehicle health monitoring, the real-time digital access, digital remote access. So the enterprise would get a dashboard where they can...
01:04:31
Speaker
log in and see all the data about their product. Yeah, so that's part of it. It's a hardware-cum-software solution. But yeah, so that's part of it. It's really the IoT connectivity as a service that is really oriented towards different fleets. And it's more fleet owner operators more than anything else in different vehicle form factors. So yeah, so that's over there. The other pillar for us is sort of the vehicle yield management services, which is effectively a revenue maximization function.
01:05:00
Speaker
And for that, it's giving aspects of our subscription software and our renter software and exposing that from a white labeling standpoint to OEMs, to dealer distributors, or actually also to the fleet owner operators. An example of this? So we work with a number of OEMs. So we work now with multiple OEMs in India where we have white labeled
01:05:31
Speaker
And so, you know, that's something where you will be announcing a lot more of those partnerships very soon. But all of the top OEMs now in India, we're working with on this white labeling, where they actually white label our software as a service. So like mind record, for example, be using this where instead of buying a mind record, you subscribe to a mind record and that is powered by zoom at the back end. Is that what this is?
01:05:56
Speaker
Right. So it's white labeled. So it's, it doesn't like to say anything about powered by zoom card, but the whole idea is, yeah. Yeah. And the whole point is that the consumer, you see Mahindra subscription. So yeah, that's right. So that's the whole idea.
01:06:12
Speaker
Yeah, okay. Very seamless, very simple. But if you think about it, the OEMs, they really want to be the brand owners. So they really desire to be the brand owners. So that's something which is really important is that they want to be the custodian of the customer journey and really have that sort of end to end
Tech Innovations: AI in Vehicle Safety
01:06:32
Speaker
Okay. And so the products you've told me so far, you have these two enterprise products, IoT and the white labeled solution, and you have short term right within the city and long term like subscribe to a car. What else? Those are the products. Those are the three core products. So
01:06:51
Speaker
What about intercity? Like, can you pick up the car at one place and drop it at another place? Yeah, you can do that. We don't really consider that different product, because that's still within short term rental. So yeah, within short term rental, we have intercity one way, we have intracity one way, flexible, you know, so free float drop, we have airport pickup, we have railway station pickup. So there is also a sort of a commute type product, which is like a
01:07:20
Speaker
a two-week rental, which gives you much lower kilometers. So there's a number of quote-unquote like microproducts within the broader macro product. So David like went back to the US couple of years back. So like why did he like was India too much for him or what?
01:07:46
Speaker
It was mainly for personal reasons. I mean, he was actually getting married and his wife wanted to be in the States. And so it was proving to be a little difficult, logistically and personally that way. And so yeah, that was really the prime motivating factor for him. So what are the technologies that you are currently investing in for the next phase of Zoom car?
01:08:13
Speaker
Right, right. So I think we're very big obviously on AI ML for probably obvious reasons as it relates to the vehicle and the algorithms that come from the vehicle in terms of predictive maintenance, driver scoring, vehicle health monitoring. So that's all artificial intelligence, machine learning based.
01:08:33
Speaker
that one piece, so for our data science, TM plus engineering. And then the other piece is CV and computer vision. So computer vision is very important for us as we think about the use cases tied to vehicle safety in terms of the dash cameras, et cetera.
01:08:49
Speaker
And then also, we have significant CV capabilities as it relates to some of the operational processes. So a lot of the image recognition, image detection, damage detection on the vehicles, a lot of that is actually done through CV, computer vision. And then even like sort of real time selfie verification matching.
Zoomcar's Journey and Sustainable Travel
01:09:13
Speaker
So if I want to match my selfie,
01:09:22
Speaker
So that was the journey of Zoom Car from an idea in Greg's mind to being a market disruptor. And if you're fed up of being locked up inside your home for months and want to hit the road, consider the sustainable option of renting a car from Zoom Car for the next road trip.
01:09:45
Speaker
If you like the Founder Thesis Podcast, then do check out our other shows on subjects like Marketing, Technology, Career Advice, Books and Drama. Visit thepodium.in that is T-H-E-P-O-D-I-U-N dot I-N for a complete list of all our shows.