Why pay for EMIs and maintenances of cars when you can just subscribe!

Buying your dream car and then maintaining it in the long run is expensive. First three years your wallet is drained in paying the EMIs and then after 40,000 kilometres in your car speedometer, the maintenance takes a toll. First the tyres need a change and then gradually the brake pads and clutch pads. Besides there is always an annual oil change, AC servicing associated, no matter how good is your car. At such a juncture when your annual increment lures you to buy a new car and then you have lot of thoughts going in the back of your brain, Revv has just come up with a solution.

The Delhi-NCR based shared mobility platform has launched a unique and innovative service Switch that lets users subscribe to a curated fleet of cars, by-the-month or by-the-year. Revv claims that this is the first ever, multi-brand car subscription platform in Asia, and is essentially an attempt to re-imagine the 100-year old practice of car ownership. Revv raised its Series A round of funding in November 2016 from Edelweiss Private Equity, and since then, have added Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Jaipur and Vishakapatnam to their geographical footprint.

“Mainstream adoption of shared mobility will increasingly depend upon an ecosystem of services coming together, which collectively cater to the full set of needs of a person who wants to adopt a lifestyle based on shared mobility v/s traditional car ownership. While some use-cases have been increasingly well-served by cabs and hourly self-drive rentals, there is a clear gap in services tailored towards longer term mobility,” said one of the co founders of the company.

Pros

For users with fast-changing lifestyles, or for users with tactical requirements (say, for a few months), buying or leasing a car is impractical, because of the long-term commitments and hassles involved in purchase, maintenance and resale. Switch aims to change that and fill this gap. It is a subscription service, available by-the-month or by-the-year. It makes accessing a car much more convenient and hassle-free, through what is essentially a ‘no commitments’ relationship. The user can get started whenever he wants, without worrying about fixed long-term expense, and switch it off whenever he wants. He can switch between car models as frequently as every month, e.g. using a hatchback for day-to-day usage, while switching to a nice SUV for vacations. He can even maintain his subscription across cities. The upfront expense will also be much lower than buying a car because of no down-payment.

Cons

However if you actually want a car for long term, it’s wiser to buy a car itself. Given the price point of Rs 21000 plus a month for hatchbacks, this won’t really work on long term. Even for down payment of Rs 1 lakh, you can buy a decent hatchback car at Rs 8000 EMIs.