Who owns the squirrel? The founder of BelkaCar talks about how the company was created

As Kommersant has learned, shareholders of one of Russia’s largest car sharing services, BelkaCar, are discussing the possibility of selling part of the business to potential investors, including the Volkswagen automaker and the Sistema_VC venture fund. The company values ​​itself at $100 million. The consultations are taking place against the backdrop of a lawsuit in Cyprus, which involves BelkaCar and the service’s largest shareholder, the Swiss Bryanston Group.

BelkaCar shareholders are negotiating to attract investors; company representatives also met with the German concern Volkswagen and the Sistema_VC fund (part of AFK Sistema), sources familiar with the situation told Kommersant. The company is looking for money for development in order to keep up with the growth of the carsharing market, confirmed an interlocutor aware of the negotiations. “BelkaCar tells investors that they are worth $100 million, but with Yandex’s entry into the car sharing market, this valuation looks too high,” says one of the interlocutors.

The BelkaCar press service reported that “in general, the issue of selling shares or issuing new ones is now irrelevant,” since the company “is not in the phase of closing the round.” Representatives of Sistema_VC “repeatedly communicated with the founders” of BelkaCar and observed the development of its business, said Iskander Giniyatullin, vice president for investments of the fund, emphasizing that the fund is not conducting substantive negotiations on investments in BelkaCar. A Volkswagen representative neither confirmed nor denied information about negotiations regarding investments in BelkaCar.

A park BelkaCar consists of 4.3 thousand cars in Moscow and Sochi. According to the Thrushering publication, according to this indicator the service ranks third in the market, behind Delimobil, which has about 6 thousand cars in 11 cities, and Yandex.Drive with about 8.53 thousand cars in Moscow and Petersburg.

Volkswagen and Sistema_VC are not the only ones who may consider investing in BelkaCar, Kommersant’s interlocutor says. According to him, last year representatives of the structures of the Daimler concern (manufacturer of Mercedes-Benz) conducted due diligence of BelkaCar, and Mail.ru Group is also eyeing this service, like other car sharing companies. Mercedes-Benz Rus declined to comment. A representative of Mail.ru Group says that the holding is considering various options to strengthen its position in the transport segment.

Attracting investment in BelkaCar is complicated by the fact that the service’s shareholder, the Swiss Bryanston Group, has become a defendant in a lawsuit in Cyprus, a source familiar with the situation told Kommersant. The company took a stake in the service, investing "several million dollars" in it, in 2017. In addition to her, BelkaCar is owned by the founders Ekaterina Makarova, Loriana Sardar and Elena Muradova.

In October 2018, the Nicosia District Court, at the request of the Munich B.S. Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH limited the assets of Bryanston Group to €26.9 million, also prohibiting Cypriot BelkaCar Ltd from selling 52.47% of the service manager JSC Carsharing, follows from a copy of the court decision (available to Kommersant). Holder of B.S. The Beteiligungsgesellschaft is being represented by the ex-president of Bryanston Resources, Benedikt Sobotka, said his lawyer Kristina Kotsapa. The lawsuit was filed in connection with fraud and conspiracy of BelkaCar, Bryanston Group, Bryanston Resources, their owners and managers, which led to the loss of Bryanston Resources assets, including 52% of BelkaCar, the lawyer claims.

Some shares are temporarily blocked, the BelkaCar press service confirmed: “This is a standard procedure for blocking shares until a court decision.” Its decision is expected “in the near future”; the situation “does not affect operational activities in any way,” BelkaCar noted. The court decision does not create a direct restriction on investments; it only imposes interim measures on the block of shares owned by the defendant, notes Dmitry Gorbunov, partner at Rustam Kurmaev and Partners.

Vladislav Novy, Khalil Aminov

This afternoon I received an SMS with the text: “100 new Kia Rios from BelkaCar car sharing are waiting for you in Moscow.” To be honest, I didn’t immediately remember the July announcement of the capital’s new car sharing, but out of habit I registered.

I won’t delay, I’ll share a nice bonus for blog readers - 300 ₽ for your first trip using promo code “UPCP3006”

So, what do we know about the service?

The founders of the service are three business women. One night in 2013, sitting in their kitchen in Moscow after a day of studying at the Skolkovo Startup Academy, Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Muradova decided to call their former California State University classmate Loriana Sardar. She lived for several years in Milan, where car sharing has recently begun to develop very rapidly. Inspired by the experience of Milan, they decided to try to do this in Moscow.

As a result, in the new carsharing, Ekaterina Makarova is responsible for marketing strategy and IT infrastructure, Loriana Sardar is responsible for the financial block, operational activities and investor relations, and Elena Muradova is responsible for corporate sales.

What sets BelkaCar apart from its competitors?

The car sharing website promises that all cars are insured under CASCO. You can also register without traveling to the office through an application (YouDrive also boasts something similar). All other points just contain standard statements about new cars, reasonable prices and European experience.

There is one more difference for corporate clients - BelkaCar has several offers for companies that want to save on taxis for employees or their fleet

By the way, about prices

The cost of renting a car is 8₽ per minute (2₽/min for waiting). After 2700 ₽ you switch to daily rental mode and the amount will not increase.

AND about painful things. Financial liability is provided in case of damage to the vehicle. In case of an accident caused by the user with damage up to RUB 100,000, the user pays the amount of damage, but no more 30,000 ₽. In case of damage on the part of the user in the amount of 100,000 ₽, the user pays 30,000 ₽ + 15% from the amount of damage.

What else do you have to pay for?

Any damage to appearance/design—RUB 7,000 for each damaged part

Let a friend drive - fine 5,000 ₽

We decided to earn extra money with a rented car - pay 10,000 ₽

Smoked or left a bag from McDonalds - 2,000 ₽ + pay for interior cleaning

Left the car in a closed parking lot - pay 10,000 ₽

Well, you’ll also pay 500 ₽ for little things if you ignore requests to refuel your car.

Another important point is that there is a mileage limit of 70 km per day. Each subsequent kilometer is charged additionally - 8 ₽/km.

About the cons. The main disadvantage is the end of the lease inside the Third Transport Ring. But with such a modest park, it’s difficult to imagine greater coverage. However, at night the rental is free, so you can leave work from the center and return it to the center in the morning.

I remind you about a small gift for blog readers - 300 ₽ for the first trip using the promotional code “UPCP3006”

The fifth per-minute car rental service in Moscow was launched in 2016 by three friends: Loriana Sardar, Elena Muradova and Ekaterina Makarova. Last week, their startup BelkaCar raised €2.1 million for development from one of the funds. With this money, the company will significantly increase its fleet of vehicles and expand its business beyond Moscow.

There is a festive mood in the BelkaCar office: “Belochka” candies - the company’s symbol - and glasses of champagne are on the table. A few days ago, the startup received more than €2.1 million for development. The girls, who had known each other for more than 10 years, decided in 2013 to “set up a business for three.”

We never thought about the automotive sector, although all three are excellent drivers,” says Elena. - What united us, besides friendship, was a love of the road and a masculine mentality.

Laura worked as a financial analyst at the BMT Private Equity fund of VimpelCom founder Dmitry Zimin. She met Elena and Ekaterina while studying at the Moscow branch of California State University, where the girls received an MBA. Since then, once every three months, the friends gathered at Laura’s in Milan, and in between meetings they “didn’t get off the phone.” In one of these conversations, Laura talked about the per-minute car rental system, which was gaining popularity in Europe. Unexpectedly for Laura, the girls picked up the idea and decided to develop car sharing in Moscow. At that time, Katya entered the Skolkovo startup academy, and Elena had her own clothing production business. The idea of ​​car sharing seemed like a gamble, but that made it even more attractive.

Car sharing is a system of per-minute car rental. Introduced to North America in the early 2000s, the first major player was ZipCar, founded by two housewives. The service is now popular in the USA and Europe; it has been operating in Russia since 2015. To use the service, you need to download the car sharing operator’s application, register and link your bank card. Cars can be rented in city parking lots, and after the trip they can be left in a place permitted by the operator. A minute of car rental in Moscow costs from 6 to 10 rubles (in BelkaCar - 8 rubles).

There are several models of per-minute car rental in the world. Services are divided into B2 °C, when the service is provided by a company, and peer-to-peer, when users exchange their own machines. This model, in turn, suggests three options for work. The first is traditional car sharing: you can take a car from a certain parking lot and return it there by the end of the rental period. Another option is point-to-point: the user picks up a car at one of the designated parking lots and returns it to any point from the list. Laura, Lena and Katya chose the most modern option, free-floating: you are allowed to take and leave your car in any street parking in the city, paid or free. The scheme is ideal for the Russian winter: users do not freeze on the way home, they can drive their car directly to the entrance.

Big car pie

There are 1,200 carsharing cars operating in the capital, the absolute market leader is Delimobil (700 cars). The remaining 500 cars are divided among 4 more players. Among them is BelkaCar, which in the coming days will increase its fleet by 2.5 times - up to 250 cars. By the end of 2017, the startup plans to “grow” to 950 cars. According to the forecasts of YouDrive founder Boris Golikov, by the end of 2017, about 3 thousand carsharing cars will be driving in the capital, and the market will grow by 400% per year.

The founders of BelkaCar say that no more than 10% of the car sharing market is now divided, and “the pie is still huge, but large companies will most likely share it. Small ones, with a fleet of up to 100 cars, are unlikely to withstand competition.”

Thank you for not being the first

BelkaCar was launched in October 2016. 34% of Car Sharing JSC belongs to Ekaterina Makarova, and Elena Muradova and Loriana Sardar each own 33%. Before this, Delimobil, Anytime, YouDrive and Car5 launched in Moscow.

At first we were worried that we were not the first, but then we appreciated the advantages of the position,” Elena smiles. - We managed to avoid many bumps that would definitely have been encountered if we had been pioneers.

Moscow remembers the experience of Delimobil, which after an accident obliged the client to pay compensation comparable to the cost of a new car, but after resonance on Facebook refused the demands. BelkaCar immediately introduced insurance for all cars under both MTPL and CASCO insurance. In the event of an accident due to the fault of the user, he will pay no more than 30,000 rubles in compensation + 15% of the amount if the damage exceeds 100,000 rubles.

The founders of BelkaCar spent their own $260,000 on forming a team and the first stage of developing an IT platform. With the first third-party investments received in the spring of 2016 from the BMT Private Equity Ltd fund in the amount of $260,000, we formed a fleet of 100 Kia Rio cars - they were leased, paying an advance of 25%. We spent 36 thousand rubles on equipping each car: parking sensors, GPS trackers, chargers, holders for mobile phones, branded wraps.

A very complex IT product, legal subtleties, a fleet of hundreds of cars - we dealt with all this easily. And heated debates broke out around the name, Elena recalls. Thematic names that contain components like drive, now and anywhere were occupied, so the girls were looking for a non-trivial word that could evoke positive emotions. They came to “squirrel” by accident and decided that Russians associate the name with a friendly animal living in their native forests, and foreigners will easily remember the laconic combination of letters.

Today, each BelkaCar car is occupied for 3–4 hours a day, the average bill for one trip (40 minutes of driving and 20 minutes of free waiting) is 320 rubles. Not only private individuals, but also companies can rent a car for a longer period and under special conditions.

The emergence of a new player is a good indicator of the potential of the service, the popularization of which will occur even faster,” says Boris Golikov, founder of the YouDrive car sharing service. - Unlike BelkaCar, we work only with private users and provide cars of a higher class, so companies will not be crowded in the market.

BelkaCar hopes to reach operating profit by September 2017. Just then the investment will come to an end, but for now the invested funds will be enough for another 10-12 months of work.

How to make friends with the state

Photo courtesy of the press service

In 2013, when the friends were preparing to launch, there was no car sharing in Moscow yet. The girls understood that they were creating a new market that required new rules of the game. I had to establish a dialogue with the government. BelkaCar collected data on the work of car sharing in the West and sent it to the Moscow Department of Transport.

At first they didn't take us seriously. But we continued to walk around, talk about Western experience, show presentations, and provide statistics. In general, they starved us out,” Elena recalls.

In August 2015, city authorities introduced amendments that stipulate the operating conditions of carsharing. The annual rental of a parking space was set at 20,000 rubles (today - 24,000), while for an ordinary citizen it costs 250,000 rubles. In addition, cars of car sharing services were allowed to park in residential areas - in courtyards and at the entrances of residential buildings, where only local residents can park cars.

Car sharing is interesting to the government because it will allow many Muscovites to give up personal transport, at least in the central regions, which will significantly relieve congestion on the roads. Therefore, BelkaCar’s communication with the authorities turned out to be surprisingly pleasant.

To be honest, we were very afraid to enter into relations with the government, we were constantly expecting a catch,” recalls Laura. “However, in reality, we communicated with a young leader who came from business, so his approach to many things is businesslike, not bureaucratic. Meetings are usually scheduled for the next day; a couple of times we even met at Starbucks.

In the future, the founders want to agree that car sharing cars can drive in dedicated lanes, like taxis. Another problem now is evacuation: the girls suggest that cars should not be taken to impound lots, but simply driven to the nearest authorized parking lot. In this case, BelkaCar itself will pay the fines, but the cars will not be idle.

Ice, car thieves and thieves

The girls were waiting for the first batch of cars like a miracle. It took 3 months to produce cars, installation of all equipment and wrapping takes another 15 days. The finished cars had to be picked up in the parking lot of the dealership and placed according to heat map points - areas of the city in which per-minute rentals are especially in demand. Usually these are central streets, as well as large shopping and business centers. The founders of the startup themselves had to drive the cars there: four hired assistants were not enough to get the service up and running by morning.

It’s night, parking at a dealership, not a soul around. We, three girls, get into the cars and begin to accelerate them. And at this moment we started having bugs in the system,” recalls Katya. - The developers had to fix everything right in the parking lot in the car.

The first month of work turned into a test of strength for the friends. On the second day after the launch, Moscow was covered in freezing rain, the number of accidents increased sharply, and all the cars had to be urgently “changed.”

Cars were stolen, completely stripped, interiors were damaged, they drove for free and even lived in cars. Every day some kind of nonsense happened, we just got enough of it,” Elena now recalls with a smile. Almost all the time and resources were spent on “plugging the holes.”

The founders were not afraid of thefts as such: GPS continuously reported where the car was. The main trouble is that every such criminal had to be literally chased. If BelkaCar saw that the user did not complete the rental for several days and refused to return the car to the parking lot or drove it outside the Moscow region, they called the police and sent corporate cars to intercept.

These are real movie chases with police and flashing lights,” Ekaterina shares her impressions.

After this, a security specialist was hired, who found out that among BelkaСar’s clients there were groups of professional hijackers. The attackers took advantage of a loophole in the rules for using the service: at first, it was necessary to pay for the service after the end of the rental, when the car was already parked. Now there is a billing system: payment is debited from the client’s card in installments of 500 rubles. If the card is empty and the service has not been paid for, the system automatically ends the rental and turns off the engine.

And if you were driving at night in the middle of the forest, you will stay there,” warns Katya. - Of course, we don’t turn off the car at full speed, so as not to provoke accidents, but we do it immediately when the car stops or slows down to 10 km/h.

It was more difficult with small pests: those who damaged the interior of cars and stole equipment. There was no and cannot be a handover certificate at BelkaCar: the user leaves the car in any available parking lot, and the damage can only be recorded by the next client.

We always wanted to make the service as convenient as possible, so we added holders. To prevent phones from running out during rental, universal chargers were installed. Naturally, they were taken away in the first week,” Laura recalls.

To protect yourself from unnecessary expenses, but not to reduce the level of service, all parts that can be removed or unscrewed are equipped with anti-vandal protection.

Now the most pressing problem for BelkaCar is the accident rate.

The cars have been and will continue to be, this is the nature of business, we understand that. We can’t get rid of this, so the main task is to repair the car as quickly as possible and return it to the park,” says Laura.

Following Moscow, the service plans to conquer regions: first expand to St. Petersburg, and then to other million-plus cities. Operational tasks have not gone away either. One of the main things now is to organize the work of a team of 30 people.

We went through a period when we ourselves raked everything with one shovel. Now we need to clearly build processes in the company and introduce KPIs,” Ekaterina is sure. - It's time to move from romance to harsh family life.

Read us in

“It’s a calf’s business,” Ekaterina Makarova, co-founder of the Moscow car sharing company BelkaCar, which received 2.1 million euros from the Swiss investment fund Bryanston in December, jokes about her project. Makarova and her two friends, Elena Muradova and Loriana Sardar, launched the service in October with a hundred blue-and-orange Kia Rios. Thanks to investments, they increased the fleet to 350 cars and expanded their parking area to the Moscow Ring Road.

The Delimobil service, Moscow’s largest car sharing service, has three times as many cars, but friends assure that their business is growing faster and in the first month of operation it reached the figures that competitors took four to five months to achieve. At the end of the year, BelkaCar has up to 300 orders per day, the average time to load a car is three to four hours. Price - 8 rubles per minute. Thus, the service’s daily revenue should be around 500,000 rubles.

“The Secret” tells how close friends do business together and hardly quarrel.

Three girlfriends

Ekaterina Makarova, Loriana Sardar and Elena Muradova are very different. Sardar, a beautiful brunette, talks about the service the most and gives a bunch of numbers. Makarova plays the role of the big boss. He often interrupts to clarify or add something, jokes a lot and does not skimp on harsh expressions. She ate all the sweets on the table until Sardar moved the plate away from her (as a joke, of course). Muradova mainly observes what her friends say. But if she suddenly decides to add something, she speaks slowly and no one interrupts her.

They met almost ten years ago at the University of California, where they studied in the MBA program. Makarova and Sardar entered there to give impetus to their careers, and Muradova decided to occupy herself in this way during pregnancy and maternity leave.

After studying, Makarova worked in the Moscow office of the American company Borland, doing marketing and business development, Sardar went to Milan, where she continued to work at BMT Private Equity, and Muradova, together with her partners, began producing clothing under the Classic Style brand.

Ekaterina Makarova

The fact that Sardar settled in another country did not affect the relationship - her friends often flew to visit her. “There was always a reason,” Muradova laughs. - Oh, museums! - let's go to Laura. Oh, shopping! - to Laura."

It was in Italy that future entrepreneurs learned that there is such a thing - carsharing. Back in 2013, there were 1,200 cars in Milan, and Sardar noted with surprise that friends leave one car in the family and actively use rental cars. She herself later registered with the local car2go, but her interest in car sharing as a business project that could be promoted in Moscow arose later - and not with her.

Night illumination

At the end of October 2013, Ekaterina Makarova, a lover of public speaking, attended a lecture at the Skolkovo business school. She no longer remembers exactly who was talking about what then - all that remains in her memory is the presentation of the startup academy, after which the business school employees wrote down her phone number.

“I didn’t intend to study there,” Makarova answers confidently. But the accelerator showed persistence and even somehow convinced me to take out a loan for education from Gazprombank. “Apparently they are doing something to people there,” Makarova laughs. “Yes, this is hypnosis,” my friends pick up.

All the students, except Makarova, already had projects, and she also needed to come up with something. One evening after lectures, Makarova went to visit Muradova. She had just put the children to bed, and the friends sat down in the kitchen to discuss their studies and other matters. Then they called Sardar, she once again began to praise the Milanese car sharing, and it dawned on Makarova: this was the project that she was interested in taking on. But not alone, but with my best friends, of course.

Startup for three

Ekaterina Makarova showed at the startup academy a sketchy business model that she had come up with overnight, but no one at Skolkovo was particularly inspired by the idea. Other students had services in development that were not burdened with any heavy assets. But the friends could no longer be stopped.

Makarova continued to go to work, attend classes at the accelerator and, in addition, found time to study the features of successful car sharing. Her friends also took part in this, and even after a year and a half Sardar decided to move to Moscow. “Give up this utopia,” their family members literally tried to persuade the entrepreneurs with tears. The founder of the project, Makarova, completely hid the startup from her family - her father learned about BelkaCar only from a television story dedicated to the launch.

Loriana Sardar

Since no one in Russia understood car sharing, and they didn’t want to get into trouble themselves, the friends invited the founder of the American car sharing ZipCar, Julian Espiritu, as a mentor, whom they learned about while watching another webinar in May 2014. “Firstly, he has enormous knowledge about carsharing, and secondly, he is simply very open...” says Muradova. “Lyon, we were just afraid,” interrupts Makarova. “We needed a psychologist who would tell us that everything would be fine.”

Espiritu turned out to be easy-going (although he was afraid to go to Russia at first), but not a cheap expert. Consultations cost a total of $60,000. Entrepreneurs no longer only spent their personal money, but also borrowed from relatives and took out loans.

At a low start

“Kar...what?” - this was the question the friends were greeted with at the Department of Transport of the Moscow Government. Then the four of them went to all the meetings - they took Espirita with them. Startups persuaded officials to allow them not to pay for parking of carsharing cars, and in the end they achieved this.

In 11 months, the department developed legislation and received the government decree necessary for its implementation. True, it was not possible to lobby for a dedicated lane for carsharing, but the friends do not lose hope.

We decided not to outsource the platform for the service, but to develop it ourselves - we didn’t want to depend on anyone. So the company got a technical director, who at that time was only 20 years old. By December 2015, he had grown into a team of six people.

Specialists had to be transported from other cities, because Muscovites, as Makarova explains, are “overfed” - they ask for huge salaries, even if they don’t really know how to do anything.

Bad Omen

Almost exactly a year ago, Elena Muradova opened the door of the BelkaCar office on Sukharevskaya one morning and found an open window and empty tables behind it. The room was missing computers, a game console, a TV, several mobile phones, and most importantly, a safe in which the founding documents were kept.

At night, the robbers carried out all the property through the window - the office was on the ground floor. For some reason, the arriving police were most interested in the documents for the equipment, but there was nothing to answer. The stolen items were the personal property of the startup founders - only one computer was purchased for the company.

Elena Muradova

The next morning, Muradova again discovered an open window in the office and a mess - already in the second of the two rooms of the office: the robbers had returned for things that they had not managed to take the day before. There was also a red folder lying on the floor - the same one from the safe, with the constituent documents.

After these unpleasant events, the team moved to a co-working space with friends, and a week later found an office in a business center on Paveletskaya Embankment. The rent was expensive, but after Muradova’s persuasion, the owner relented and gave a discount - the premises had just been vacated by a Turkish company, which had to leave Russia due to the sanctions imposed at that time. The previous tenant BelkaCar inherited a fresh renovation with bright yellow walls.

When there is no money

The launch of the project was still far away, and the money was running out - the friends had already spent $260,000. “At first it was inconvenient to call friends and ask for help, but this quickly passed,” the entrepreneurs recall how they tried to contact someone investor.

They had a clear idea of ​​what kind of investor they needed - strategic, Western and with expertise. But endless negotiations did not produce any results. “After the hundredth meeting, I stopped counting them altogether,” recalls Sardar.

As a result, in the spring of 2016, the money finally ran out, and Sardar decided to turn to Dmitry Zimin, the founder of VimpelCom, the owner of the Dynasty investment fund and BMT Private Equity, where she worked in Milan. Zimin did not invest, but instead offered to borrow 250,000 euros from him.

At a low start

“Of course, we wanted to be the first - so much work has been done,” laments Loriana Sardar when it comes to the official launch of the project. In the summer of 2016, there were already four car sharing services in Moscow (Delimobil, Car5, YouDrive and Anytime), and BelkaCar was still at a low start.

In August 2016, the friends finally reached agreements in principle with an investor, who is not named now, and were already preparing for the launch when another turn took place in their story. Ekaterina Makarova received a call from an unfamiliar number. Having heard something about investments, he handed the phone to Loriana Sardar with the words: “Here, this is your next investor.” They called from the Swiss Bryanston Foundation and offered to meet.

At the meeting with the investment manager and analyst at Bryanston, the founders of BelkaCar felt relaxed because they thought that it would not end in anything. Nevertheless, in the evening of the same day they received a call back and were offered to take the money on terms that were better than those they had been given before. The friends immediately agreed. In September, they finally said goodbye to the first potential investor and signed an agreement with Bryanston, which invested 2.1 million euros in the company in November.

Pumping car

All night on October 21, ten BelkaCar employees covered 100 dark blue Kia Rio hatchbacks with branded orange film. The launch of the service has already been announced - there is nowhere to retreat. The founders then drove them to the parking lots themselves.

Bryanston's investments made it possible to expand the parking area to the Moscow Ring Road; 250 more cars were added to the first 100 cars. Now BelkaCar has up to 300 orders per day, the average time to load a car is three to four hours. In the spring, the service will try to expand to St. Petersburg.

According to Sardar, in the first month BelkaCar managed to achieve indicators that its competitors had been achieving for several months. In addition, the project was able to avoid the mistakes that Delimobil made at first. For example, after the loud scandal with the accident of the Delimobil car, the question of whether to apply for CASCO or save money was no longer a question for my friends.

But the most acute headache is not competitors, but unscrupulous clients. One day Sardar came home from the office and burst into tears - the charger in another car, which was sewn under the panel, had been torn out by the roots. And this is not the worst thing: they spend the night in cars, try to steal them, transport pets without carriers and, of course, get into accidents.

Moscow carsharing is again at the center of a scandal this week. This time there were no wrecked cars and hundreds of thousands of compensation, just a business proposal for bloggers appeared on the Internet: “You write a lot of negativity about one car sharing company and get a well-deserved reward for it.” It was not necessary to use the services; you could simply use your imagination and compose a text.

On the Internet, two assumptions arose about this: either the car sharing market became so crowded that such dirty tricks were used, or the company itself initiated a “false attack” on itself in order to attract attention. Such a clever PR move.

And while bloggers were immersed in the search for the true motives of employers, we at Daily Storm decided to pay attention to the carsharing market itself in order to understand what this phenomenon is and why it is so interesting.

What is car sharing

For those who are not in the know, car sharing is a type of short-term car rental with a per-minute, hourly or daily payment. The advantage of this rental is mobility and the absence of unnecessary formalities: use your smartphone to find a car, choose and drive, no negotiations with operators or waiting on line.

In Moscow, the first service was launched in the fall of 2015 and within two years gained popularity: now cars with an orange print on the city streets are by no means uncommon.

In order to rent a car, you just need to register on the website, indicating your data (passport, license, residential address, etc.), and also download the mobile application. Actually, this is where almost all the red tape ends (you still need to sign an agreement, but often the offices agree to bring it to you themselves). However, there are some subtleties: to rent such a car, you must be over 21 years old, and your driving experience must be at least two years. If you don't meet the requirements, take a taxi or metro.

The main players in the carsharing market

If a large-scale confrontation using black PR has really begun in the carsharing market, then the use of other methods is not far away (no hint of an administrative resource!). Therefore, to understand the situation, you need to get to know the players and understand what they are like.

Currently, there are five car sharing companies operating in Moscow: BelkaCar (it was their service that bloggers were asked to write a little negative about), YouDrive, Delimobil, Anytime and Car5. And in September another operator will be added - Carenda.

The largest company is Delimobil (Car Sharing Russia). 58% of the authorized capital belongs to an offshore company - Luxembourg-based MK Listed Securities, which is associated with another company - Mikro Kapital. Its owner is the President of the Italian Sambo Federation, Vincenzo Trani, who has settled so closely in Russia that at the height of the sanctions, he promised to sew suits in his atelier for all officials who were banned from entering European countries and the United States. Denis Saklakov, a businessman and good friend of Maxim Liksutov, is also associated with Mikro Kapital.

Other representatives of Delimobil are also no strangers to strength sports. The general director of Carsharing Russia is Alexey Gradov, and the co-owner is Artur Melikyan. Both work in the office of the head of the International Sambo Federation Vasily Shestakov. As of 2016, the company's profit amounted to 257 million rubles.

Next - YouDrive (aka NTS, CEO Boris Golikov). Its owners are no longer from the world of martial arts. German technology, gasoline and mobile applications come together here. 40% of YouDrive's capital belongs to the Panavto company, the official Mercedes dealer in Russia. The remaining 60% belongs to NGK. Its owners became famous for creating the Pump.Today smartphone application for remote delivery of gasoline directly to the parking lot.

“Victim of bloggers” BelkaCar is, at first glance, an exclusively female project. The company is run by three friends: Ekaterina Makarova, Elena Muradova, Loriana Sardar. There is nothing particularly interesting to tell about them, unlike the man who is called the main investor of this car sharing company - Dmitry Zimin, founder of the VimpelCom company. Investments in BelkaCar at the first stage amounted to about 148 million rubles.

Car5 is the CEO and owner (more precisely, the engineering center “Information Security Technologies”, which is indicated in the lease agreement) Andrei Rose. Probably the most inconspicuous person on our list. Before coming to car sharing, he was involved in traditional car rental.

Anytime is the most mysterious company on the list. 95% belongs to Sabina Yakubova, who is known to be the wife of a certain Salim Yakubov. Moreover, the details of his biography are almost impossible to find. Even his patronymic could only be found among the participants of one Moscow conference - Nasimovich. And then we began to have suspicions about the reasons for such secrecy. In 2009, Novaya Gazeta, in its article about the Cherkizovsky market, wrote that “a certain Yakub was in charge of the affairs of leasing warehouses and selling points on Cherkizon.” Journalists also clarified that the partner of Zarakh Iliev (the owner of Cherkizovsky) and the co-founder of Firm Iliev LLC was named Salim Nisonovich Yakubov. We managed to find Iliev Firm LLC in the SPARK-Interfax system, but neither Iliev nor Yakubov are listed among the co-owners. So we are not 100% sure that the mysterious “Yakub from Cherkizon” and the husband of the owner of Anytime are the same person. The company itself could not answer this question.

Range matters

There are now more than three thousand carsharing cars operating in Moscow. If you compare it with the capital’s total vehicle fleet—4.8 million cars—it may seem like a drop in the bucket.

But here two factors need to be taken into account.

Firstly, dynamics. According to the Moscow Department of Transport, in the fall of 2016 the number of carsharing cars was approaching a thousand. That is, in less than a year there was a threefold increase. But this is not the limit: studies show that the market capacity can reach 15 thousand cars.

The market, according to experts, is certainly very promising.

“Currently, not only in Moscow, but also in the country as a whole, the cost of owning a car is rising. For a certain category of citizens—I mean those who don’t need to use a car all the time—car sharing is a good alternative,” automobile columnist Andrei Osipov tells the Daily Storm.

Secondly, all over the world the ratio of carsharing cars to private cars is approximately the same as in Moscow. The fleet of the largest short-term rental company, Car2Go, is 12 thousand cars. Moreover, they are scattered across 7 countries of the world. The saturation density of the cities - Moscow, Berlin and New York - is approximately the same. This can be seen on the maps, which you can look at below.

There is an important caveat, though. In terms of quality and comfort, cars in the West are an order of magnitude higher: while the vast majority of cars in our country are economy class from Hyundai and Kia (no offense to these brands, many in the editorial office drive them), then in European car sharing companies the basis of the vehicle fleet is BMW and Mercedes.

IT and regions

Another sign that the carsharing market is a very attractive place is the interest in it from Internet companies.

On August 15, Yandex released the first aggregator for car sharing companies, which should simplify the use of services. The idea is simple - to make sure that users no longer have to scour several applications and waste precious time searching for a free car; now cars from several companies are located on one map.

“Car sharing is now actively developing: more and more people are using it, new car sharing companies are appearing, the service is coming to the regions,” explained Anton Ryazanov, head of Yandex.Car Sharing.

And regarding the regions. There are huge prospects for the development of this type of business. Now companies are actively promoting car sharing in the most solvent cities with a population of over a million. Thus, according to the portal cars-sharing.ru, in addition to Moscow, in Russia the car sharing service is available in St. Petersburg in the companies YouDrive, Delimobil and Colesa. In the Krasnodar region - in the cities of Sochi, Adler, Krasnaya Polyana, Tuapse - there are car sharing services from the companies YourMove and UrentCar, and in October Delimobil will launch the service in Ufa.

Competition

Regarding car sharing, one more question: for whom is this a competitor - for public transport, private transport or taxis? Experts insist on the latter option. This position was expressed by Igor Morzharetto, partner of the analytical agency Avtostat:

“All of this is a form of modern mobility. In a megacity, having a car becomes optional. I have come across cases where people actually abandoned their cars in favor of carsharing or taxis,” the expert added.

So far, taxis are surpassing car sharing in popularity. According to the Taxi Price Index 2017, Moscow took third place in terms of cheapness per 1 km of travel, behind only Cairo and Bangkok.