Gaurav Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of Savaari Car Rentals, a company that has services in 2000+ cities across the country, recently sat with NewsX wherein he talked about his start-up journey, the mission of his company, and how the post-covid times have changed the way of travelling for people.
Gaurav, a graduate from Mumbai University, pursued his higher studies in the state and later joined the corporate sector in the bay area. Talking about the inception of Savaari and how did the idea of the same emerge in his mind, he said, ” Right from my college days in the US, I used to book rental cars online. On one of my trips to India back in 2015, I was looking to book an online chauffeur or a rental car from Delhi to Dehradun and I couldn’t find a car rental company online that I could trust with quality service and a reasonable rate and ended up asking a friend to help me out with it. After doing a bit of research myself, I realized that this market is largely unorganized. Post this incident, we started out with the idea of Savaari car rentals.”
“The most conservative estimates put Indian Car Rental Market at $15B annually. Though billions of dollars have been spent by two on-demand players in the market during the past 7 years, it is quite surprising that 85% of the market still remains unorganized,” Gaurav added.
Speaking about the growth of the company over the years and whether the company has been able to bridge the gap and the services offered by Savaari, Gaurav stated, ”We provide quality chauffeur rides with car rentals close to 2000+ cities across India at super competitive rates. Simultaneously, we offer customization and assistance through our spirited 24×7 customer support team, thus providing the ideal combination of a technology platform and services-based approach. In these cities, we provide airport transfers, local rentals, and inter-city travels, we provide round-trips around the city where you keep the car and the driver with you and Bombay inter-city drops so that you can travel from one city to another.”
He further talked about the unique approach of Savaari in bridging the gap and how the company operates differently and uniquely than other services. ”Indian consumers are not easy to please. when it comes to services, they want quality service at a cheaper and reasonable cost and that is the reason why the market has remained highly unorganized because there is no pan-India player that you can go to and who you could trust for high quality, reliability and at competitive rates, so this is the gap that we had identified and set out to work towards the same,” said Gaurav.
When asked about the growth of the company over the last few years, Gaurav underlined that Savaari Rentals has been one of the few startups that has become profitable. He said, ”We became profitable in the FY19 and our company witnessed solid growth in the year 2020 although the FY21 has been majorly impacted due to the covid-19 lockdown. we are looking to do around 122 crore profit by the financial year 2022 which will be close to 50% profit plus growth for our FY21 which is quite impressive growth.”
Stating that his brand stands at the core of trust and how customer safety and comfortable rides are the company’s priority, Gaurav shared insights about the different features offered by the company like travel kits which includes suggestions about places to visit and options like language selection for the drivers so that travellers coming from different states and having different linguistic needs feel comfortable and enjoy a joyful ride.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way people travel and commute. While the pre-pandemic travel demand was traditionally centered around leisure and business, travel was more need-based during the lockdown. With the vaccination drive starting in different phases across the country, the road ahead looks promising. Domestic travel has resumed, giving people a chance to finally step out of their houses to give themselves a well-deserved break. Travel picture in 2021 looks optimistic and the year is being tagged as the return of the classic roadtrips in India,” elaborated Gaurav.
Finally, on a concluding note, Gaurav shared his vision of the company and how the company is keeping up with the changing trends of travel. ”Post the covid 19 situations, we expect that there would be a lot of regional travelling and there is a new trend called ”Revenge Travel” where people who have been stuck in lockdown or those who had to cancel their trip because of the lockdown, take a trip. Off late there has been a trend of exploring new places and road trips are the best way to explore these places. Our mission is to help you explore India, one road trip at a time,” said Gaurav.