At first glance, it seems that there is no difference between short-term and regular car rental, and in either case, the consumer receives the car for personal use for a certain period. However, short-term car rental (also called carsharing) compares favorably with the fact that it allows you to take your car at any convenient time and in any convenient place for any period, including a couple of hours, while car rental offices offer their customers rent a car from one day, and if hourly rent is provided, it will be quite expensive.
Car rental is aimed at people who needed a car, often a certain class, but who at the same time do not see for themselves the need to constantly be behind the wheel.
Short-term car rental allows you to actually have at your disposal a car, but at the same time pay for it only when it has to be used. Hence the reduction in costs for the client, because he does not have to buy a car right away and give the whole amount, but the car will just stand near the house for a long time, the client is spared the need to do maintenance and repair. In general, short-term car rental is useful even for the city, because if this area is developed, the number of cars will be reduced, parking complexes will be unloaded, because several people will use one car.
To get started, you need to register as a business entity, registering an IP is most often impractical because it will require a lot of investment in this type of business. Therefore, it is best to choose the form of a limited liability company, because in this case, if the annual income does not exceed 60 million rubles, a simplified taxation system will be available, which involves transferring to the state’s benefit no more than 6% of income or 15% of operating profit. The activity itself falls within the definition (OKPD 2) 77.11. Rental and leasing services of cars and light motor vehicles.
In general, such a business will require a lot of investments from the entrepreneur, an order of magnitude more than when organizing even a large car rental. Indeed, for a business for short-term car rental it is not enough to have a fleet of cars, you also need the appropriate infrastructure throughout the city. If the city is small, then the investments are an order of magnitude smaller, several points of delivery of cars will be enough, but in megacities the number of such points is measured in dozens. In this regard, it makes sense to unite several enterprises for organizing a business, when one office has cars, another has parking areas, and the third has maintenance facilities. It makes sense to apply to the municipality, because such a business can be safely classified as significant for the city as a whole (unloading roads and parking lots), so local authorities will most likely be able to help with money or land in this endeavor. It is clear that the businessman who has many connections among the power structures has an advantage here, because in this case it will be much easier to agree.
To understand what is required, you need to look a little more at the principle of the short-term car rental service. A person does not go to a specific office to get a car, he looks at the site (and some companies even develop special applications for phones) available cars in the nearest place. Typically, cars are located near metro stations, in large parking lots, near or on the territory of large business centers, entertainment centers, in general, from where a large number of people will pick them up. We must not forget about airports, automobile and railway stations. The more such places, the more effective the short-term car rental. That is, a person takes a car, and then passes it in another place, paying only for the actual time of use, the calculation is even not by the hour, but by the minute. It’s convenient for the client - he can take the car near the house, and then hand it over next to work.
That is, there are already no problems with parking and car maintenance, while all the advantages of personal vehicles for the client are preserved. First of all, you need to buy a fairly large number of cars, but there is no longer such an urgent need to purchase expensive cars, here the car is a means of transportation, not luxury. Buying absolutely cheap auto junk is also not worth it. Middle class cars are suitable, you can buy one car for 400 thousand rubles. This is an average price, although an entrepreneur may consider the possibility of a very economical and exclusively urban transport - electric vehicles. They do not develop high speed, are not suitable for hours-long trips, but at the same time they do not consume gasoline (which is very profitable) and are not too expensive. A good Chinese electric car will cost in the amount of 200 thousand rubles. At the same time, it is much more profitable to maintain it. In most cases, electric cars will be the best solution for many companies, while the cost of charging such a machine is initially included in the price, and the client is spared the need to call for a gas station. True, you will have to have a lot of backup cars, if there are too many orders and you have to constantly recharge the cars - this is the only (but significant) drawback of using electric vehicles. Therefore, you can buy ordinary cars and electric cars in the park. The number of vehicles is calculated in each case individually. If, nevertheless, it was decided to work in a small city, then even in this case you will have to purchase at least 5-10 cars, and in megacities the car bill increases several times. Hence the need, even in a city with a population of less than 100 thousand people, to have at least 2 million rubles for the purchase of only transport.
However, in small towns it is almost always inexpedient to open a short-term car rental service, because even a car rental is not always profitable here. In a relatively large city, you need to have several tens of millions of rubles, at least for a start, although you can still try to save some money at first by purchasing cars on lease. Many banks are considering leasing cars, and it helps a lot in the early stages. However, there are some restrictions on leasing, for example, some banks set a limit on the maximum amount (maybe within 30 million), which significantly limits the entrepreneur’s capabilities. At first, you can hope that there will be no excitement and strong demand, and there will not be a shortage of cars to experience. But if the service is suddenly relevant, then people will be unhappy if there is no car somewhere.
The next step is to establish infrastructure. It is unlikely that at the first stages of work there will be an opportunity to buy several parking zones at once, to allocate places and equip service stations, so it’s worth starting to look for partners in this direction. They can become already existing offices that offer appropriate services. The cost of one parking space in the parking lot costs an average of 200 rubles per day, that is, a month to maintain one car will cost 6 thousand rubles, which is not so expensive; and you can count on a big discount, if you can agree with a partner. Otherwise, you will have to build your own parking lots, for which you will have to look for land, get a building permit, invest a lot of money in infrastructure. You can read more about the construction of one parking lot in the corresponding article, but here we note that the minimum is about 2 million rubles. And throughout the city you need a lot of them. That is, cooperation with other companies really allows you to significantly reduce your spending. Partners will be airports, hotels, and not just parking areas. Nevertheless, it is recommended to have several stations of your own, at least to be able to maintain cars directly near the office. For work, you need to allocate an office at least 20-30 m2, and for this it is better to look for a place in the city center, where it is convenient to get to all customers. About 20-30 thousand rubles per month will have to be allocated for office rent, but this amount is very average.
The next stage is the search for employees of your enterprise, and here you will need at least one person at a point where you can pick up and leave the car. In general, if an affiliate program is established, then an employee of the partner company can also act as a manager, and some companies that offer carsharing even equip their cars with special devices that block and open the car remotely. That is, the need to attract employees can be completely eliminated - a person can pay for the car through a bank card, come to the place where the car is remotely unlocked for him, after which he leaves on it and rents it the same way without the participation of managers. However, there are many risks, because the entrepreneur cannot check the condition of the car, and if there is some kind of malfunction in the program, then the client will not be able to use the car. In addition to people who are engaged in the reception and issuance of cars, it is advisable to hire drivers who can work by car, that is, a car service with a driver is offered, or who simply engage in delivering the car to the client directly to the house.
Next, you need to hire people who will be busy with simple organizational and administrative issues, and this can be done directly by the entrepreneur himself. Separately, people who are involved in resolving issues related to accidents and resolving disputes with insurance companies are hired, nevertheless, a certain percentage of accidents will occur even despite the fact that cars are usually issued only to experienced drivers (age from 21 years, driving experience - not less than a year, usually three years). All business processes that are not related to profit-making by an organization should be outsourced. This includes bookkeeping, consultations on tax and legal issues, as well as ensuring the protection of their parking lots, if this is not provided for by the partner.
Now you can make an approximate calculation of financial indicators. For example, at the beginning, an entrepreneur acquires 10 cars, each of 400 thousand rubles, while this amount also includes the cost of insurance for motor third party liability insurance and hull insurance. Cars are purchased by a leasing company, the amount of the starting payment is 10%, that is, 400 thousand rubles. The amount of the monthly payment will be about 120 thousand rubles. There are many leasing programs, the conditions in different companies can vary greatly, so these are all too averaged indicators. In the worst case, about 200 thousand rubles a month (5% of the cost of cars) will be required to service cars; the cost of fuel is not taken into account, since it is paid by the client, some companies offer their regular customers the opportunity to purchase a club card, which involves monthly payments, which cover the cost of fuel, but at the same time the rental price is slightly reduced. In general, up to 200 thousand rubles per month can go for fuel for 5 cars - at the rate of 20 liters of gasoline per day for one car. The salary can go from 100 thousand rubles a month, if people are not hired at each point of reception / issuance of cars. It turns out that monthly expenses amount to 620 thousand rubles, the cost of renting parking spaces is an additional 60 thousand, that is 680 thousand rubles. The price of one hour of rental is an average of 300 rubles, that is, if each car is occupied per day for at least 7.5 hours, then the entrepreneur will be able to cover his expenses. If each machine is occupied 10 hours a day, then the income will amount to 900 thousand rubles, and operating profit - 220 thousand rubles per month. Hence, net profit will amount to 187 thousand rubles. Once again, these are very rough calculations, because depending on the region and many other factors, the indicators can be different. It is also clear that each new car increases the profitability of such an undertaking, although it does increase costs to some extent, that is, buying every new car is still a risk.
There are many difficulties in this endeavor. At first, a lot of time will be spent on registering your business, because you need to conclude a leasing agreement, register cars, and deal with many other bureaucratic issues. That is, it can take several months. But still, the biggest difficulty is attracting customers, because if car rental is already relatively popular and has its own client, then carsharing is still little known in Russia. At the same time, you need a very competent pricing policy, because in case of high prices for your services, you will have to compete with taxi services. Few people want to rent a car, bear responsibility for it, when you can just call the driver with the car. Therefore, carsharing should definitely be cheaper and more convenient. You can conduct a marketing campaign through the local media, you will need to post information about yourself on thematic portals on the Internet, and also, if possible, create your own website. Such a business has a rather long payback period, especially if it is planned to build infrastructure, but it promises a considerable profit to the entrepreneur. Given that this area is practically not developed today, a novice businessman can become the first in his city.
Matthias Laudanum
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08/18/2019