Cars Are Simply Computers On Wheels
Today, 25 per cent of new cars produced are ‘connected’. By 2026, this number will increase to 60 per cent. Vilhelm Hedberg, Founder of ekar, speaks about cultural considerations, subscription plans and fueling the mobility market with data In an interview with Martechvibe, Vilhelm Hedberg, Founder of ekar, spoke about ekar’s journey, and how it […]
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Today, 25 per cent of new cars produced are ‘connected’. By 2026, this number will increase to 60 per cent. Vilhelm Hedberg, Founder of ekar, speaks about cultural considerations, subscription plans and fueling the mobility market with data
In an interview with Martechvibe, Vilhelm Hedberg, Founder of ekar, spoke about ekar’s journey, and how it became Middle East’s largest personal mobility company. According to Hedberg, well-analysed, clean and usable data is the fuel that drives any successful business.
Excerpts from the interview:
Tell us about your journey.
ekar is the Middle East’s first and largest personal mobility company, providing users on-demand access to thousands of carshare, subscription leasing vehicles, and other mobility options, all within its ‘Super App.’
ekar is car rental simplified, without the hassle of being bound to a single location or a rental kiosk. Users can pick up and drop off the car at any place and any time while paying a fraction of the cost of a ride-hailing or a taxi service. ekar’s flexible pricing structure means users can pay per minute, hour, daily, or weekly depending on their needs, starting at as low as 65 fils per minute.
ekar has grown from a 15-vehicle pilot program with Etihad Airways to a multi-country service with thousands of cars, around 300,000 members who have booked 1.8 million trips, and over 120 employees.
We have successfully built the world’s highest utilised free-floating car-sharing provider by 2019. ekar won the GCC car-sharing Providers Company of The Year title in 2019 by Frost & Sullivan, was selected as a 2020 Endeavor Entrepreneur in the 93rd International Selection Panel and was crowned SME Leader 2019 by Arabian Business.
What were the barriers to launching a subscription and peer-to-peer mobility solution?
Subscription-based car leasing has relatively low barriers to market entry compared to peer-to-peer or free-floating car-sharing. While governments in the Gulf heavily regulate car-sharing operations, subscription leasing has more flexibility. That said, not all subscription leasing companies are created equal.
Subscription leasing requires long-standing and trusted partnerships with car rental and leasing companies to aggregate car menus. ekar has the largest menu of subscription leasing cars in MENA, and relies upon its long-standing partners to ensure their fleet’s availability.
We often hear from new customers how they were discouraged by other subscription companies while selecting a car that later became unavailable. ekar mobility OS, on the other hand, integrates directly with car rental ERP systems, allowing the app to only showcase available cars at the local car rental office in real-time. ekar can also source vehicles from its own carshare platform to inject into subscription leasing, ensuring a seamless and accurate booking process.
Car-sharing, especially peer-to-peer, is heavily regulated by various government entities and has high barriers to entry, and for a good reason. Sharing cars is complicated, and ensuring safe driving is of critical importance. Car-sharing requires expertise, and ekar has established itself as a global leader in it, including being recognised as the highest utilised carshare in the world in 2019.
How have customer behaviours changed over the last two years?
Global new car shortage and the surging price of fuel has significantly impacted consumer behaviour. Consumers now recognise that owning a car is expensive and, without the ability to share that car back, is simply a depreciating asset.
In the UAE, peer-to-peer car-sharing, unfortunately, is not yet approved by the federal government. Customers are therefore opting to carshare or subscription lease rather than buying a new or used car.
KSA, on the other hand, has embraced peer-to-peer car-sharing. We are seeing a surge of ‘ekar Entrepreneurs,’ or people buying new and used cars to dedicate to ekar as an investment.
How does culture impact how you design customer experiences as you expand your footprint further to Southeast Asia?
Launching ekar in a cultural melting pot like Dubai allowed us to get insight as to how various cultures interact with our platform, and has allowed us to improve our product accordingly. We always strive to ‘keep it simple.’ ekar’s UX and UI are so intuitive that registration and booking take less than 30 and 10 seconds, respectively. Today, we have over 300,000 members from over 50 nationalities, and our app is available in three languages with local currencies.
What advice would you give marketers to build a robust data and analytics team?
Clean and usable data, properly analysed, is the fuel that drives any successful business. Poorly assembled data or tracking the wrong kind, on the other hand, can be catastrophic and lead to bad decision-making.
If you are not currently tracking your customer behaviour, such as lifetime value, customer cost of acquisition, and basket size, and clearly understand your business’s contribution margin, then prioritise it immediately. Hiring an experienced senior data manager is the first step toward strengthening these aspects of your business.
One emerging technology that can disrupt the marketing landscape in the near future?
Cars are simply computers on wheels; at least, that’s the way we see them. Today, 25 per cent of new cars produced are ‘connected.’ By 2026, this number will increase to 60 per cent.
We envision a world where car screens can be connected according to user profiles and habits. How can driving behaviour enrich the driving experience? If, for example, someone is passing by Starbucks on their way to work, why not allocate them real-time coupons?
Tell us about your talk at VMF_KSA.
I will be speaking at the Fireside Chat – The Game Of Subscriptions, I’ll discuss the next potential major shift since the industrial revolution is the subscription economy. Customers are increasingly looking for flexibility; subscriptions remove the burden of ownership and give customers the choice of access. I will also outline our role in building the right programs to solve existing business challenges.
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