by Donald Wood
Last updated: 3:00 PM ET, Thu April 16, 2015
Image via Drivy.com
Car-sharing services are a popular means of transportation that continues as an industry to grow internationally, and there is a new heavy hitter in the game as France-based Drivy has raised $8.6 million (€8 million) in new capital for the business.
According to Romain Dillet of TechCrunch.com, car-sharing service Drivy added two new investors (Bpifrance and Via-ID) to its existing investors (Index Ventures and Alven Capital) in order to make a bigger impact on the car rental market.
One of the first actions for Drivy officials was the decision to purchase the company's smaller competitor Buzzcar. The price for the purchase has not been released to the public.
With the addition of Buzzcar and its existing customers (around 100,000 users and 7,000 cars), Drivy now has 500,000 registered users and 26,000 cars available in the French and German markets. Drivy will look to expand into the rest of Europe as soon as possible.
When asked about what Drivy hopes to accomplish with the new investments, company co-founder and CEO Paulin Dementhon told TechCrunch.com:
"We don't want to compete with traditional car rental services; we want to replace owning a car with a much more practical service. We think we can get 3 million members and 300,000 cars in three years' time. This market represents €500 billion just for Europe. In order to become a leader on this consumer market, we undeniably need a high financial capacity."
This isn't the first major investment Drivy has been awarded, either, as the company raised €6 million in 2014 to further expansion into Germany. For 2015, the company is looking to expand even further into the Europe.
While a portion of the capital will be used to aid in the eventual expansion into other European markets, there is an emphasis on improving the Drivy apps and website in order to become more customer friendly in this technology-heavy era.
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