Self-drive car rental start-up Zoomcar India Pvt. Ltd has posted a 10 per cent increase in loss at ₹116 crore during the year ended March 31, 2018, as against ₹105 crore in the year ago period.

While the company was able to contain its losses, the revenues have increased by about 31 per cent at ₹158 crore in FY18, compared with ₹120 crore in FY17, according to its financial data filed with the Registrar of Companies, which was assessed on business intelligence platform Tofler.

Founded by two expats — Greg Moran and David Back — in 2013, the company provides on-demand self-driving services to consumers who do not own or wish to own a personal car.

The Bengaluru-based company’s total expenses during the 2018 fiscal rose to ₹274 crore, up from ₹225 crore in the previous fiscal.

The self-drive rental start-up that initially started with owning fleet of cars, has lately shifted its business strategy to an asset light marketplace model.

The change came after the company realised that owning a fleet incurred huge costs and that maintenance cost was impacting its margins.

The company lets users book vehicles and make payments online. Users have to locate a Zoomcar car lot within their locality to pick up the vehicle.

It also offers doorstep delivery of the rented vehicle.

Growth tracked

Backed by auto major Ford, the company had last year raised $40 million in a Series-C funding round led by automobile maker Mahindra and Mahindra Ltd (M&M). Other investors include Sequoia Capital, Empire Angels and Nokia Growth Partners.

The company had last month entered the electric vehicle segment in partnership with Tata Tigor.

The service is currently available in Pune, on the company’s rental platform and expects to scale it up to 20 cities in 2019, its founder Greg Moran had said during the launch.

Other venture

It also launched a dockless bicycle sharing service in 2017, called Pedl.

Pedl was temporarily discontinue the service last month as there was a need to upgrade the cycles.

It was present across 10 cities and will be relaunched soon, the company said in a statement.

The firm had also has an associate programme that allows people to lease their own cars to its platform under a revenue-sharing model.

Zoomcar charges a 25% commission on revenue that its associates make.