Saturday 21 / December / 2024
Muscat: selfdrive.om, a car rental application which is an entity of Pinewoods Technology Services, has launched its services in Oman with the aim of expanding their presence beyond UAE. selfdrive.om is an e-commerce platform that leverages technology to cater to the ever-increasing needs of the modern customer for convenient mobility. The car rental app will offer its users, both individuals and corporates in the Sultanate, direct access to a wide variety of cars and latest models direct from the dealerships and leasing companies.
selfdrive.om provides convenience, choice and ease of booking while renting a car. Using the app, which is built on a proprietary tech foundation concept of ‘Search – Select – Pay’, customers can rent cars on demand which will be delivered at their doorstep. selfdrive.om offers absolute flexibility to its users by allowing them to rent cars by the day, week or even subscribe by the month or lease a car upto 3 years. The app provides a superior automotive experience to its customers with the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence which matches customer profiles with cars of their choice when selecting and renting a car.
selfdrive.om, launched in 2017, is the largest car rental tech platform which has crossed 2500 cars on road and serves over 50000 users from 95 different nationalities in the UAE. It offers daily rentals that start from AED 49 per day and monthly rentals that start with AED 999 per month.
“Oman and UAE both experience international connectivity and there is a lot of travel between both the countries. As such, having our presence at the Sultanate is a natural fit because of its strategic location and hence we chose Oman as the first step to our GCC expansion. Moreover, it has robust tourism landscape, which is perfect for our business growth. As the first technology player to have a presence in this market, we are confident that the future looks promising,” said Soham Shah, CEO and Co-Founder of selfdrive.om.
“Oman is a great market for the automotive sector, and we see a big potential to be part of that development. In the ever-evolving car rental industry, our novel, tech-driven solution will not only enhance customer experience, but also provide a faster, easier and personalised experience in booking cars at competitive rates, as well as offer access to convenient and secure payment methods while renting a car,” added Mr. Shah.
The coming years will see the transport landscape transit to autonomous, electric and shared model. Commenting on the future of transportation, Mr. Shah said, “The near future will witness a transformation in the car ownership model and there will be a rapid increase in the adoption of MaaS (Mobility as a Service) with different subscription-based service or an on-demand model of mobility being offered, where customer may not own the asset but request it on demand.”
selfdrive.om is constantly striving towards adding more brands to its existing portfolio of cars in Oman. It’s wide network of partners allows customers access to the world’s leading automobile brands such as Nissan, Toyota, Chevrolet, Mitsubishi, Renault, Mazda, Kia, Hyundai, Volkswagen and BMW.
selfdrive.om currently operates in the UAE and has plans to expand in other GCC countries like Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia by Q1, 2022 followed by UK and Europe by Q2,2022. The app currently has 150K downloads across Android & iOS and works on a zero-subscription fee model. At present, they are the largest in retail fleet network on road with an average accessible fleet of 1000 cars.
