Today Voiturelib announced they have changed their name to Drivy, and can now be found at Drivy.com. This doesn’t surprise me, given that the startup raised €2 Million from Index Ventures last summer, and there was no way Index would invest in a company that wasn’t going to go international. Drivy resonates more internationally than Voiturelib, a name likely born on the -lib trend in startup names – Autolib (car-rental network in Paris), Velib ( bike-rental network in Paris), Simplib, Weblib etc.) just one of the many trends in startup names.
We’ve already changed over all our old Voiturelib article tags to “Drivy”, so you can see them all together here. The company has seen a lot of growth in the past year, and with the recent (pending) acquisition of ZipCar by Avis, there’s definitely room for growth in the car-sharing network. Drivy’s concept, peer-to-peer car-sharing, was actually picked up by former ZipCar co-founder Robin Chase, who launched Drivy competitor BuzzCar in France, similar to Zilok Auto, which raised €1.5M late last year from Jaina and Ecomobilite as well.
There’s no doubt that the car rental market is about to get shook up – many are talking about the future of collaborative consumption, whether it will last after the economic crisis dies down, or whether it truly is the future of commerce. One thing’s for sure: several venture capitalist are betting on it sticking around for the next 10 years, and a few of them are going to make big bucks.