Drivy, ex-Voiturelib, is the first french P2P car-sharing company to raise funds in this scale. The startup intends to keep growing and disrupt how we use cars today. While numerous carsharing websites are raising funds in the US (GetAround, Wheelz and RelayRides just raised between 5-15 million dollars), France is also in the target of investment funds. Drivy just raised 2 million euros and claims to be "the French leader in the industry and among the World's leaders". The company grows about 30% monthly: it also announced some weeks ago that it redistributed more than 1 million euros to the car owners using their platform.
"An ideal scenario"
Drivy led a first round of fundraising last year, approaching notorious web entrepreneurs such as Frédéric Mazella, BlaBlaCar founder. This second round was considered an important step for Drivy as it is doubled with marketing purposes. For Paulin Dementhon, Drivy’s founder, “this funding round is an ideal scenario. We are now enjoying the support of the French fund Alven Capital and of the well-known international fund Index Ventures, which had previously invested in other collaborative consumption start-ups like Etsy”. Index Ventures is also one of the first funds to have invested in Facebook. Index had expressed a few months ago their interest in French start-ups, and we are now witnessing the result of such interest. Dominique Vidal, Index Ventures partner explains that “Drivy is one of the brilliant examples of how Internet can make daily life much easier and sustainable while reducing expenses. As investors, we are proud to support the team’s vision and to help this project become one of the main transportation services in Europe within the coming years”.
"Investing in innovation"
This seems to be the objective of Drivy with this funding round. Its founder Paulin Dementhon observes:
Today, for each Metro station in Paris, there are three cars available on the website. (His) wish is to have one in each street to make the access to a car an easier solution than ownership of a car. Our ambition is to revolutionize our relationship to cars.
Cars are currently available for rent on Drivy. The company wants to “multiply this number by 20 rapidly. We will innovate at very high speed and are currently recruiting the bet engineers”. The three main objectives of this round are first the “platform innovation” (product, security, algorithms and search functions), secondly the scaling of operations (“especially the customer service”) and finally the acquisition of new users through an increase of marketing spending.
"External growth is first a human matter"
What about international growth, especially in the neighboring European countries? “External growth is first a matter of human resources and opportunities” answered Paulin. As France comprises 10 actors within the growing but still narrow market of peer-to-peer car rental, such opportunities quite likely to arise soon. You can have a look at this video interview (in french) with Paulin Dementhon, founder of Drivy :