Why car rental company Myles is eyeing expansion post-COVID-19

Founded in 2013, MylesCars is an Indian self-drive car rental service company that has been growing at a fast pace in the automotive sector. With operations spread across 21 cities in the country, Myles offers service subscriptions and car rentals to its customers.

Speaking about how Myles handles the festive period, Sakshi Vij, Founder, Myles, mentions that domestic travel has gone up significantly as COVID-19 restrictions have eased up and customers have started to pick up cars and drive to their destinations.

“In terms of numbers, we have seen almost over a 100 percent increase because the festive season is also coupled with the opening up of a lot of restrictions post-COVID-19,” she tells YourStory’s Daily Dispatch. The numbers have gone up on the subscription side as well.

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She explains that the automotive sector has faced two kinds of challenges over the last year. The first was the lockdown, which was a big challenge for the sector, but as the markets opened up, it saw a significant uptick in the number of subscriptions.

“The number of EVs that were now being made available in the market increased by over 40 percent,” says

Sakshi. Apart from that, another trend that was noticed was the boom in the used-cars subscription.

Speaking of the key pillars of growth, Sakshi says that Myles has already partnered with a large number of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) such as Maruti Suzuki, Toyota, and MG Motors, and they provide subscriptions to all their customers. The company has plans of launching at least five more OEMs in the next year.

She adds that they are seeing a huge increase in the used-cars and electric vehicles segment. “Today, we have close to 2,000 vehicles on our platform. We believe that the growth in the next year over the next five years will be many folds of that,” she says. There was almost a four-fold increase in business between the last two years. Myles is hoping to have at least 10,000 cars on their platform over the next 18 months.

Sakshi says that Myles is currently operating in the self-drive segment in about 21 cities and they have been receiving a significant amount of demand from Tier-I cities. They are looking at expanding their subscription business to places like Jaipur, Kanpur, Indore, and Lucknow.

Commenting on the fundraising scenario, she says that Myles was initially self-funded and was then funded by angel investors. Owing to aggressive expansion plans, the company will be possibly looking at fundraising opportunities next year. “Our numbers are sort of opening up now, markets are really great, and we’re getting a lot of interest from the investors' side as well,” says Sakshi.

Lastly, she says that Myles is exploring the possibility of introducing smaller segment vehicles such as two-wheelers and also servicing the last-mile delivery segment on subscriptions. “We’re exploring it, not launching yet but hopefully in the second quarter of 2022,” says Sakshi.