Car sharing platform Youyouzuche (Chinese: A friend with a car) recently announced that they raised $10 million in the A round of financing. The main investor in this round was Lightspeed China Partners, with additional investment from China Renaissance K2 Ventures and angel investor Wang Gang.
Beijing-based Youyouzuche was one of the first P2P car rental platforms in China. Their P2P private car sharing service utilizes mobile apps to create a broad “social community” of car owners and drivers. Owners of unused cars can use the platform to find drivers need to a car and offer their cars to these “renters”, while drivers can rent cars at a low cost. Unlike other P2P car rental companies Youyouzuche places more importance on the social community aspect of their service, with a seamless flow of service from rental to return. Meanwhile, the service is over 30% cheaper than regular car rental companies, so it is both an economic and ecological travel solution.
Youyouzuche says it will use this A round of financing to set up coverage in second and third tier cities, form and train operations staff in major cities, and invest in branding and marketing activities etc. Based on their existing developmental foundation, Youyouzuche firmly believes that they can greatly speed up the expansion and estimate that they will have basic coverage in all of the second and third tier cities in the country by the second half of next year.(Translation by David)
