Indian car-sharing platform Zoomcar to launch operations in Vietnam

SELF-DRIVE car rental firm and car-sharing platform Zoomcar announced on Wednesday (Dec 1) that it will soon launch operations in Vietnam.

This comes on the back of the Bangalore-headquartered company's recent completion of a US$92 million private placement led by the New York City-based SternAegis Ventures and recent entry into the Philippines and Egypt.

In a press statement, the company said it has appointed Kiet Pham, who had held senior management positions in companies like Gojek, Oyo and Nielsen, as its Vietnam country head.

Zoomcar added that the foray into Vietnam is in line with the company's mission to democratise car access across the world's most populated and fastest-growing emerging markets.

So far, Zoomcar - which started in 2013 and now has about 10,000 cars on its platform - has raised more than US$290 million to drive its global expansion, including across South-east Asia, it pointed out.

The company said it will continue to invest in its "advanced engineering and data science platform", which will help strengthen its market leadership in global car-sharing.

Zoomcar also expects to bump up its investments across Internet of Things, machine learning and computer vision-related applications, which would help transform user experience on the platform, it pointed out. It is also looking to strengthen its enterprise software offerings to original equipment manufacturers and insurance companies.