O2O car sharing and hire platform Woo Kong has received a total of RMB20 million (approx: US$3 million) in angel investments from Buttonwood Capital and Jinkejun Capital. Its CEO Xianhe Hu said Wu Kong attracted the investments with its imaginative car-hire solutions produces by its outstanding team.
Woo Kong CEO Xianhe Hu
The Woo Kong car-hire platform was launched in August 2014 in Beijing by five former auto industry and IT executives who are also Peking University and Qinghua University MBA graduates. It is owned by Beijing-based Jiaoyi Brother Information Technologies.
The leasing platform entered the car rental market with a lightweight asset + heavy operations model offering both normal fuel and new energy automobiles for hourly rental via an online distribution system. It already has over 400 listed cars that have a rental rate of over 60%, or 240 rentals a day, available from over 50 online distribution points in Beijing.
Mr. Hu believes that driving will be the main mode of commuting in the future but price sensitive and eco-conscious drivers will not necessarily want to go through the trouble of buying their own cars. Traditional car rentals mainly offer daily to long-term rental options while new P2P car rental platforms offering car rental share solutions face various limitation and cannot be a real alternative to car ownership. Only hourly car rental available for pick up and return anytime and anywhere in short to long-term rental would be a viable alternative to owning cars.
He also said that hourly car rental will become a major area of development in the future vis-a-vis other transport models. The segment is now in an early development stage and has three major defining characteristics: rental by the hour, door-to-door vehicle delivery and return vehicles anywhere.
Woo Kong has leveraged technology and standardization to overhaul the car rental process and improve user experience.(Translation by David)
