Hipcar Relies on Advanced Technology to Present Car Sharing Services in Indonesia

One more transportation service on-demand present in Indonesia. This time in the form of car sharing with a special automatic system for Jakarta residents. Founded by Founder Leo Tanady, Hipcar which has been present since the end of 2015 is a transportation service car sharing first in Indonesia.

"Starting from my personal experience while studying in the United States, I saw the service car sharing there, Zipcar is quite popular and quite successful, seeing the increasing number of services on-demand in Indonesia then I tried to apply the technology in Indonesia," said Leo to DailySocial.

Overall the technology used by Hipcar is relied on only in applications with systems remote control specially created and implemented in Hipcar. By ordering a car rental in the application, users can immediately pick up the car that has been ordered by using remote control.

"The technology used by Hipcar is specially made from Europe, by combining the existing system the user can access the car without a key with just one touch in the application, it's easy, safe and fast, that's the specialty of Hipcar," said Leo.

Currently Hipcar can be downloaded in the application mobile platformsAndroid and iOS. After the user has registered, they can choose a car based on the nearest location or nearby. After there is information on the availability of the car, the user will be given information in the form of the type of car equipped with transmission and number of cars seat available passengers and the estimated hourly price.

After the order process is done timer will automatically run until the user arrives at pick-up point Hipcar. Currently Hipcar only has two locations pick-up point, namely around the campus area of ​​Tarumanegara University and Bina Nusantara University.

"We deliberately target students for Hipcar consumers, to avoid unwanted things when placing an order, we ask users to include a photo of themselves, ID card and driver's license," said Leo.

For payment, Hipcar applies credit points which can be transferred by users through well-known banks, later in each account the car rental fee will be deducted by the credit by Hipcar when check-out or when the lease is over.

"Currently we have 4 units of cars consisting of Toyota Avanza and Agya, per hour for Agya we charge Rp 30 thousand, while for Avanza Rp 40 thousand," said Leo.

Most users who rent a car on Hipcar use the car for a minimum of 2-3 hours and a maximum of up to one full day. If the time has reached more than 24 hours, the fee will automatically be charged only Rp. 450 thousand without any additional fees.

"Since the beginning we have done monetization and did not provide subsidies, so that we can use operational costs to develop products and increase the number of existing teams," said Leo.

Targeting 2 thousand cars in the next 5 years

Trying to be a technology company that runs its business efficiently, Hipcar is getting seed funding from angel investors and is currently still undergoing the accelerator program from GnB Accelerator. Hipcar also continues to raise funds which are expected to be used to increase the number of cars, develop products and add new features.

"Our target for the next 5 years is to have 2 thousand cars, add innovation in features and expand location services, currently we can only serve users in the western part of Jakarta," said Leo.

Without utilizing digital marketing such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads, Hipcar currently claims to have around 300 registered users and 50 active users every day. Promotions that are carried out are entirely in the form of activities offline just like setting up booth on campus to distribute brochures only.

Reluctant to partner with individuals and conventional car rental

Services car sharing At first glance, what Hipcar offers is similar to the services offered by car rentals in general, but Leo emphasized that as a technology company, Hipcar has significant differences in terms of services, features and approaches available to users.

"By putting service first on-demand Of course Hipcar relies on speed and comfort in terms of car availability, for that reason Hipcar sees no partnership with car rental or among individuals because we need dedicated car which is always ready 24 hours to be rented to users," said Leo.

Leo added that currently there are many car rental services and individuals who offer to become partners of Hipcar, but for now and it is estimated that this partnership will not be launched.

Not only developing products and services in Indonesia, Hipcar products, which are currently patented at the Director General of Intellectual Property Rights, are planned to be developed regionally. This is done considering the landscape and trends in transportation services that are similar to those of Indonesia.

"In the future, we plan to expand the expansion of Hipcar products to other countries in Southeast Asia such as Thailand and the Philippines, of course after Hipcar has become a service provider. car sharing favorite in Indonesia," concluded Leo.