ekar, the Middle East’s first and largest personal mobility company, is launching operations in Thailand, starting with capital Bangkok in January 2022. This will be followed by other cities later in the year.
Thailand has been on a lockdown and curfews since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and is currently lifting restrictions. As a beachhead strategy, ekar is launching its proprietary car subscription service which offers cars from one to nine-month terms for a single monthly subscription cost with no down payments or long-term commitments via the ekar app. ekar will be introducing its peer-to-peer carsharing services later in 2022.
“We are very excited to place our first footprint in Southeast Asia. Bangkok is an incredibly exciting opportunity, a city with a high smartphone penetration yet limited tech-enabled self-drive mobility options. Bangkok has eight times more cars and motorbikes than can be properly accommodated on its roads. ekar’s subscription and peer-to-peer carsharing services will allow residents and tourists to have access to affordable 4-wheeled mobility, whilst reducing the overall number of cars on the roads,” said Vilhelm Hedberg, Founder, ekar.
All ekar subscription cars, which are tech-enabled cars from existing fleet owners and car rental companies, come with insurance, maintenance, and roadside assistance and can be switched, traded up, or returned at any time. A user simply selects a desired model on the ekar app and a sterilised car is door-delivered within a two-hour window.
ekar’s peer-to-peer carsharing allows individuals to rent their own cars out to the general public and earn money. This form of mobility, like subscription, will put a halt to the need to buy a car.
Since its inception in 2016 by founder Hedberg, ekar has grown from a 15-vehicle pilot program with Etihad Airways to a multi-country service used by more than 250,000 customers and booked an impressive 1.5 million trips. ekar operates in UAE and KSA, and is launching Thailand and Malaysia next, with Egypt and Turkey launches scheduled for later in 2022.
In 2019 June, ekar launched operations in Riyadh following the company’s Series B fundraising totalling $17.5 million.
ekar’s vision is to improve the way people consume transportation and is achieving scale by MaaS-enabling car rental and leasing companies as well as peer-to-peer rentals via ekar’s Mobility OS. It was the highest utilised free-floating carshare service in the world in 2019, and awarded GCC Car Sharing Providers Company of The Year in 2019 by Frost & Sullivan and Top 5 Startups in 2018 by Forbes Middle East. Founder Hedberg has been crowned SME Leader of the Year 2018 by Arabian Business.
