Ekar extends its mobility OS to GCC third-party fleet owners

Self-drive mobility company ekar has extended its platform to third-party car rental companies.

Its ‘ekar Fleet’ SaaS platform enables car rental and leasing companies to enable their vehicles onto the ekar app. They stand to benefit from a fully contactless rental process, increased fleet utilisation, driver behaviour analytics, and tracking of vehicles in real-time.

The move comes as car rental and leasing companies struggle to shake the effects of Covid-19.

For consumers, the ‘ekar Fleet’ program will add thousands of new cars to the ekar platform. Increasing fleet size also means that an available car is more likely to be around the corner to rent and unlock via the ekar app.

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Last year, ekar was recognised as the highest utilised free-floating carshare service in the world. Although governmentally imposed Covid-19 lockdowns temporarily blocked the service in early 2020, demand is starting to pick up from both consumers (B2C) and businesses (B2B).

“We recognised early that the focus of our fundraising spend should be towards building our technology infrastructure,” said Vilhelm Hedberg, founder of ekar. “Unlike other mobility players in the Middle East who are using generic third-party technology, ekar has been laser-focused on internal technological developments that benefit both consumers and fleet owners. We are proud to have signed on more than 5,000 vehicles to the programme within a few short weeks of our recent soft launch.”

Hedberg says there are over 500,000 daily rental and leased vehicles in the Gulf that can potentially be onboarded onto ekar’s Mobility OS via their in-car telematics device. “We intend to work with our valued partners to onboard as many as possible,” he added.