Drivezy, Bengaluru based vehicle sharing platform, announced a strategic business partnership with OYO Hotels & Homes, one of the fastest-growing chain of hotels, homes, living, and workspaces. The company looks forward to creating on-site hubs to station its cars and bikes on OYO owned properties.
OYO’s expansive network provides for over 10,000 leased and franchised buildings with traces in over 300 cities across the country. The hubs will be offering to OYO’s guests as well as other customers convenient access to Drivezy’s wide range of vehicles. The firm has already placed 1,200 bikes at OYO hotels in the cities of Bengaluru & Hyderabad and is looking forward to increasing the number to 100,000 bikes & cars over the period of the next three years.
Amit Sahu, the co-founder of Drivezy, said, “We are really excited to work with them as we both believe in the common philosophy of the sharing economy. Establishing on-site hubs with OYO will allow us to further increase our penetration in the growing tourism sector which is mostly dependent on cabs and chauffeur-driven car rentals,”
OYO’s first step
According to reports, OYO earlier entered into partnerships with mobility platforms. OYO and Chinese company Didi Chuxing have been in talks since 2017. OYO used the ride-hailing platform to announce its entry into the world’s second-largest economy. The tagline, at that time, read, ‘Ride comfortably with Didi, Stay comfortably with OYO.’ The Chinese ride-hailing giant invested $100 million in OYO earlier this year.
The OYO & Drivezy Alliance
The Bengaluru based firm, Drivezy, was founded in 2015 by Ashwarya Pratap Singh, Hemant Kumar Sah, Vasant Verma, Abhishek Mahajan, and Amit Sahu. It offers cars, motorcycles, and scooters on rent at 100 locations in 11 cities across the country. The company operates a fleet of over 4,000 cars and 14,000 bikes. The customers can easily rent vehicles from their website or app on an hourly or daily basis. Drivezy also offers weekly & monthly subscriptions on its two-wheelers. The firm has raised a funding of over $32 million in equity financing from investors like Axan Partners, Das Capital, IT-Farm, Yamaha Motor Ventures, and Crowdworks.
To use the facilities provided by Drivezy, OYO guests will be needed to sign up on Drivezy’s platform and provide the pin code. The OYO guests will get the first preference to hire the vehicle as the vehicles are parked in the property itself.
The 2013 company, OYO, has moved from a hotel aggregator to a franchisee model. It has built itself into a massive brand in the hospitality sector. The firm has extended its services to more than 800 cities in 80 nations worldwide. It has raised a funding of $1.7 billion from investors including Airbnb, SoftBank Vision Fund, Greenoak Capital, Hero Enterprise and Sequoia Capital.
According to records, Gaurav Ajmera, Chief Operating Officer, India and South Asia, OYO Hotels and Homes, said, “Our association with Drivezy will help us add a new dimension to our service offerings, ensuring that our guests have a perfect stay with their own independent hired vehicle without having to worry about booking cabs or drivers.”
