OuiCar just announced a new round of investment with Jaina Capital and Ecomobilite Ventures, their historical partners, for €3 Million. Their goal: making one car available in each French street in the foreseeable future.
A great ambition for an interesting value proposition: make the most of the time you don’t use your car – that is 95%, according to OuiCar’s team – to rent it to other drivers. OuiCar plays the intermediary role: renters pay the company which then diverts 70% to the owner. Half of the 30% commission is dedicated to insurance, a cornerstone of the car-sharing business. The team closely watches the fluidity of the exchanges to make sure that renters easily find what they need.
In order for this model to work, French drivers need to deeply change their habits and their relation towards mobility. According to Marion Carrette, OuiCar’s CEO, the path is already half-paved since collaborative economy and mobility are both very dynamic in France. The success of AirBnb or BlablaCar shows the French public is already used to sharing goods – an “airy-fairy idea 7 years ago” specifies Marion Carrette.
Marion CarRette first created Zilok in 2007, a peer-to-peer renting platform for general objects (from drills to baby-beds). After years of struggle to get the insurance companies onboard, the company’s CEO finally managed to fulfil what was her original vision: create a platform dedicated to cars in 2012. OuiCar was finally born in 2013, and grew quickly: rentals were multiplied by 10 and cars by 4 in just a year.
Both Jaina Capital and Ecomobilite Ventures seem like the perfect match for OuiCar: Marc Simoncini’s fund already invested in other collarborative economy’s startups (La Ruche Qui Dit Oui) and in Meetic, another model of online communities that has an impact IRL. Ecomobilite Ventures, created by SNCF, Orange and Total, claims “the objective is to contribute to the emergence of a new ecosystem” in sustainable mobility. Both funds already invested in the company who raised €1,5 Million in October 2012.
There are already 10,000 cars all around France, mainly in big cities. Knowing that 42% of Paris residents do not own a car, OuiCar might come in handy.