French startup Drivy has raised another $35 million (€31 million) from Cathay Innovation, Nokia Growth Partners and existing investors Bpifrance, Via-ID and Index Ventures. If you don’t already know Drivy, the company wants to rethink the way car rental works today.
If you have a car, chances are you don’t use it every day. Sometimes you can even spend long periods of time without using it thanks to public transportation. Instead of having a useless car, you can rent it to someone else. In other words, you become a sort of car rental company for your own car.
On the other side of the equation, if you live in a big city, chances are you don’t need a car. Having a car could even slow you down. But sometimes, you want to go on vacation and a car would be useful. Sure, you could rent a car from any of the existing car rental company. But Drivy lets you rent a car from someone else for less.
This way, you could find big cars, small cars, give back your car on a Sunday and more. Drivy wants to be more flexible than your average car rental company.
And the good thing about Drivy is that the bigger it becomes, the more convenient it is. Like other marketplace startups, Drivy becomes more interesting when you have more options around you. That’s also how Drivy can beat rental companies — it’s easier to rent from your neighbor.
Available in France, Germany and Spain, Drivy has been doing well with 1.4 million days of rental and 850,000 users ever since the platform was created in 2010. Even more telling, you can find 36,000 cars on the platform today.
So what’s next for the company? With today’s funding round, Drivy plans to expand to other European countries, starting with the U.K.
It could be a bit harder to convince British people given that they care a lot about having the right insurance when renting a car. Drivy takes care of that with a partnership with Allianz. And with so much money on the bank, Drivy is certainly looking at other potential countries as well.