How Savaari consolidated its position as the largest pan-India, car rental service provider, during the pandemic

Savaari Car Rentals, the brainchild of Gaurav Aggarwal was started to fill the gap that existed in Indian online Car Rental market, as a company that could be trusted for its quality chauffeur-driven car rental services on a pan India basis. Gaurav who had been used to booking car rentals online in the US was astonished to find that there was no option available in India when he had to go to Roorkee from New Delhi and wanted to book a car in advance while sitting in the US. What started as a moon lighting idea with a seed money of Rs 55,000 kept growing brilliantly each year, finally prompting Gaurav to pursue this full time by moving from US to India in 2011, quitting a well-cushioned high-tech job in the Bay Area
Today Savaari is a name to reckon with in the fast growing Indian car rental segment with clean cabs, well-trained chauffeurs who are well-versed with some of the most exotic and unexplored destinations, to make domestic holidays truly pleasurable, wholesome and memorable. From a car rentals company, Savaari has built a reputation of being a “travel partner” to the discerning traveler. The real test of Savaari’s innovation prowess came to light when COVID-19 struck in early 2020 bringing travel and tourism to a grinding halt.

However, Gaurav and his team seized the opportunity to pause on their tracks, introspect, feel the pulse on the emerging trends and demands of customers and draw up a blue print for the company to sail through the difficult times.

With everything coming to a standstill and organizations making work from home mandatory, the only option for people was to move back to the hometowns resulting in an exodus of people from metros and larger cities to their homes leading to surge in demand for one-way car rentals. Emergency/essential travel was what was on everyone’s mind. Savaari quickly ramped up its one-way services from a few hundred to 5, 00,000 routes and subsequently to 15, 00,000 routes to cater to the growing demand.

Towards the later part of 2020, as the cloud began to clear with restrictions being eased in, people started venturing out to satiate their pent-up travel urge. Weekend travels slowly started gaining pace. Caution was the name of the game with car rentals coming as the natural choice. This was an opportunity for Savaari to show its expertise in road travels. Road trips also serve as the ideal option to explore more locations. Enroute to your end destination, there lies numerous unexplored spots hitherto untapped. It could be a restaurant offering the most authentic local cuisine Such explorations are possible only when you are on your own, hiring a car rental service with a local driver, exploring one location at a time. Moreover, Savaari strongly believes that India is best explored by roads.

The second-wave of the pandemic again in early 2021 came as a cruel blow for the industry which had started to limp back to normalcy. But that didn’t deter Savaari. With caution and safe travels continuing to rule the roost, it was once again time for Savaari to make sure that the year-end travel buffs get their fair share of travel treat. Today, Savaari is a proud family of 25,000 vendor and driver partners who have completed over 1 million road trips covering a distance of 500 million kilometers across the country.

To drive growth, Savaari is betting big on domestic travel in 2022. Towards this, Savaari has: