Hiroshi Nishijima serves as the Chief Executive Officer for Zoomcar Holdings, and initially joined the company as Chief Operating Officer in 2022, before taking on the CEO role in 2024. Mr. Nishijima has over 25 years of experience in the global automotive industry and over 10 years of experience in leadership positions in automotive marketplace businesses like Grab Holdings Ltd. and Via Mobility, Japan. In his past career, Mr. Nishijima also served as a Principal at Boston Consulting Group. Mr. Nishijima received an undergraduate degree at Keio University and attended Aoyama Business School.
Zoomcar, founded in 2013, has grown into India’s largest peer-to-peer car-sharing platform. You joined the company as COO in 2022 and took on the role of CEO in 2024. With your extensive experience in automotive marketplaces at companies like Grab and Via, how has your leadership shaped Zoomcar’s next phase of growth?
When I joined the company, we were in the middle of transforming ourselves from an asset heavy rental business to a carsharing marketplace. Over the last few years, we’ve been able to transform the business into a marketplace model that is nimble and asset light. Much of the experience from my time at Grab, which is another marketplace business in Southeast Asia, was relevant to reshaping Zoomcar to what it is today. We are the leading car-sharing marketplace in India, operate with fewer than 150 employees, and are scalable to support 2-3x the bookings we’re generating today.
Can you talk about some of the changes that have taken place in the business over the last few months since you’ve taken over the role of CEO?
The biggest change was reshaping our growth strategy. Historically, the investments we used to make in marketing and incentives to engineer growth were not the right long-term strategy. We shifted towards a more sustainable path by focusing on the customer experience of our Hosts and Guests. For example, we established fulfillment centers that cater to Hosts who want a hands off experience, whereby we take up the logistics of cleaning and maintaining the vehicle and handing the keys to Guests booking the vehicles. This saves our Hosts a significant amount of time and makes it easy for them to remain on our platform.
Unlike traditional car rental companies that own their fleet, Zoomcar operates as a marketplace, allowing individual vehicle owners to monetize their cars. How does this business model provide advantages in scalability, affordability, and convenience compared to competitors?
The biggest advantages are the flexibility and potential earnings opportunities for Hosts by joining our platform. For many households who own a vehicle, there is a great deal of idle time when the car isn’t being utilized during the day or week when we’re not driving to the grocery store or picking up our kids from school. We offer Hosts an opportunity to earn side income by placing the vehicle on our platform when it’s not in use. For some Hosts on our platform, they see an uplift of 15-20% of their monthly earnings, net of car maintenance and insurance costs. We see more and more entrepreneurs start their own business by leasing 10 or 15 vehicles and placing them on the Zoomcar platform as their main source of income.
Zoomcar has positioned itself as a technology-first mobility company. What innovations improve efficiency, safety, and profitability for both hosts and guests?
Our goal in deploying technology is ultimately to improve the customer experience. For example, the Guest experience; we want to capture our Guest’s attention as soon as they start using our app, and provide the listings they want to see. We learn over time what our Guests preferences are, whether they prefer larger SUVs, or luxury vehicles. We can gauge what types of cars pique their interest based on how long they interact with each page, how quickly they scroll, and how many taps they make while on the app. And we’ll continue to develop features that make the in-app experience more efficient and enjoyable.
Scaling a marketplace model in the mobility sector involves trust, regulatory compliance, and maintaining a seamless user experience. What key strategies have helped Zoomcar navigate these challenges while ensuring reliability and user satisfaction?
To scale our business, the biggest priority is increasing supply. We have established robust online organic acquisition funnels in the last few months. Active hosts and active cars are growing organically. What we are doing differently in this quarter is to build high quality supply by using offline acquisition channels, which are supported by technology and online tools. For our Hosts, we also hold regular meetups where we look for their insights and feedback to help further improve their experience on our platform. These are important investments we make to grow and maintain a high quality supply. We know that demand is very high, as we cannot always find enough vehicles to match a Guest’s request. By increasing high quality supply and offering our Guests more choices on the platform, it supports a virtuous cycle of growth.
Following its public listing on Nasdaq under the ticker “ZCAR” in December 2023, Zoomcar has attracted investor attention. Recently, the company raised $18M and is on track to raise an additional $15M in Q2 2025. How is this new capital being deployed to drive expansion, technology advancements, and operational improvements?
We’re grateful for all the support our shareholders have shown us over the years. The capital will be largely deployed for growth, and the biggest focus areas for us will be supply growth, and continuing to improve the customer experience. With new capital, we can invest in technology to accelerate product development. We’ll continue to invest in innovative ways to drive growth of the business.
With urbanization on the rise and car ownership becoming more expensive, car-sharing platforms are poised for rapid growth. What should investors know about Zoomcar’s market position, unit economics, and future potential?
The dynamics around transportation and car affordability, coupled with the competitive environment, positions us well to succeed.
We’re the clear leader in the self-drive car market in India. We don’t check what our competitors do as our focus is to provide great customer experience to our guests and hosts. It’s up to us to continue driving innovation and maintaining our leadership position.
We operate in a large market: there are over 1.4 billion people in India, and digital penetration is extremely high, with over 1 billion connected devices. India has become a very digital economy, where people transact primarily online. If you walk up to a street vendor selling coconuts, you’re very likely going to pay with your mobile phone and a digital wallet. We also operate in an environment where car affordability is low and where car ownership is highly aspirational. Only 1 in 10 households own a vehicle, and the average cost of a car is 3 to 4 times the annual earnings of an average person. These are all dynamics that support a large opportunity for Zoomcar.
Our current unit economics are very healthy. We have been contribution profit positive for five straight quarters, and profitability continues to increase, without sacrificing bookings growth, which was nearly 20% last quarter on a year over year basis.
As AI and automation play an increasing role in mobility, how do you see Zoomcar evolving its technology stack to stay ahead of the curve? Are there any future innovations or partnerships that particularly excite you?
AI is very relevant for our business. Consumer behavior is starting to change with the availability and use of AI, and it’s on us to stay ahead of the curve and adapt. One area that comes to mind is how consumers make purchasing decisions today. In the past, people would read reviews to determine what the experience is actually like for other customers, to help them determine if the product or service was right for them. Today, people want the answers fast and are looking for a summary. I can see a scenario in the future where our Guests will want to run a query in app to determine what type of vehicle is best for their journey; whether it’s a couple with a young family looking to book a multi-day trip and require a large vehicle, or a small group of university students who are looking to rent a cool car for a few hours to spend a day driving around town. Companies like ours will need to evolve along with customers and their changing consumption habits to stay market leaders.
How can people find out more about Zoomcar?
We offer a number of resources, including presentations and webcasts on our investor relations website at https://investor-relations.zoomcar.com/in/. Please feel free to reach us as well for any questions about our business at investors@zoomcar.com. Thank you very much.
