Josh Horwitz · · 2 min readSmove catches $1.1M in funding to expand its fleet of short-term rental cars
Smove, the Singapore-based startup that brings (relatively) eco-friendly cars to passengers looking to get around town, has announced it has raised a US$1.1M funding round led by Rebright Partners, and with contributions by 500 Startups, Wavemaker Pacific, and five unnamed investors. The company will use the funding to increase its fleet of vehicles.
“The global trend towards a sharing economy has seen cities in Europe and the US deploy car-sharing services very successfully. We see this trend hitting Southeast Asian cities, too. And Smove has demonstrated this in Singapore,” said Takeshi Ebihara of Rebright Partners in a statement given to Tech in Asia.
It’s been almost two years since we last reported on Smove, and a lot has happened within that period. When Tech in Asia’s Terence Lee covered the company in 2012, it offered up three transport services: Customers who wanted to drive a car around to run errands could rent an electric automobile. Customers looking to commute could pay for Smove’s shuttle service, which the company also ran using electric cars. The more fitness-minded could pay for one of Smove’s electric bikes, available for rent through a scheme that resembled the urban bikesharing programs in London and other cities.
Now, the shuttle bus is gone and the bikes are no more. After months of testing, founder Tom Lokenvitz and his teammates ultimately decided that the company’s future lay in the rental car model.
“We had a small fleet of electric cars. We didn’t need to do much marketing, people were just signing up and telling their friends. So we realized we hit a pain point in that segment,” Lokenvitz told Tech in Asia. The company has also changed its vehicle make to the Toyota Prius C.
In its current iteration, Smove lets Singaporeans book a car online through its website at least one hour before they intend to use it. Customers can pick up vehicles at one of several designated locations around the city, or a Smove employee will personally deliver the car to a specific location for S$8 (US$6.40). Drivers can unlock vehicles and verify their identity using their personal EZ-Link metro cards. The company charges S$20 (about US$16) by the hour, and S$90 (about US$70) for twelve-hour periods.
“Basically, because cars are so expensive to own in Singapore, we’re a middle ground between the Uber or GrabTaxi kind of service, and the classical rental car businesses,” Lokenvitz told Tech in Asia.
Smove’s fleet consists of 17 vehicles at the moment, and Lokenvitz hopes to increase that number to 100 by this time next year. Its Like-minded competitors in Singapore include CarClub, an AirBnB-esque carsharing service, as well as services that work with traditional rental car services like Drive.SG.
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