The need for mobility increases during Durga Puja as well as the holiday season that follows. Not only does one need vehicles for the pandal-hopping rounds, one also needs them for travelling out of the city, as so many of us do during or after the four festive days. Typically, one would use one’s own car for either of these activities, or hire a chauffeured vehicle. But now there’s a third option — self-drive vehicles.

Over the last year or so, two companies — Zoomcar and MyChoize — have been offering self-drive car rentals in Calcutta. They provide you with cars for you to drive yourself around, in town or on longer out-of-town trips. And the trend is catching on. So much so that Zoomcar has now spread its operations to other cities in the region, such as Bhubaneswar, Guwahati and Siliguri. MyChoize, though, has not pushed its eastern boundaries beyond Calcutta.

According to Zoomcar CEO Greg Moran, business has been good here. “We started off with 10 cars a little more than a year ago, but now we have increased the fleet 10x to about a hundred cars in Calcutta,” he says.

Pankaj Jain, head of MyChoize, says since the operations started about a year ago acceptance of the product took a bit of time, but is catching on. “We started with 10 cars and the number is now up to 22. But we also have a car rental service and can pull in cars from there,” he says. The number can go up to about 70 cars.

The variety of cars available is also quite wide. For Zoomcar, the range starts from Maruti Swift, Ford Figo and Mahindra KUV100 that can be hired at Rs 70 per hour or Rs 1,680 for 24 hours on weekdays under its 120km package option (Rs 130 per hour in peak season). The Audi Q3 and Mercedes-Benz GLA SUVs are the most expensive to hire and cost Rs 265 an hour (Rs 500 an hour in peak season). In between there are the likes of the Ford EcoSport and Honda Jazz at Rs 90 per hour, and SUVs Mahindra Scorpio and Hyundai Creta for Rs 120-Rs 130 an hour.

MyChoize, too, offers a similar range of vehicles. The least expensive is the Maruti Suzuki Dzire at Rs 1,620 per day and going up to the Mahindra XUV500 at Rs 2,480 on a normal weekday. But under its demand-driven dynamic pricing, rates could nearly double with a Dzire costing about Rs 2,910 for 24 hours and an XUV or Toyota Innova Rs 4,450.

It might look a tad expensive, but there are still enough takers. And the reasons for that are not far to seek. A self-drive car gives the flexibility and freedom to stop and go as and where one pleases to. Second, says Moran, these are often hired by those who are visiting Calcutta and need a vehicle to travel around as they do not have wheels in the city. Many visitors, he says, pick up the car at the airport when they land, keep it for the duration of their stay and return it at the airport.

Moran says the demand on weekdays is mainly from those who want to go around in the city, while on weekends it’s from those planning to travel out of town. As for MyChoize, Jain says that a self-drive car is a leisure product still.
It is probably for their out-of-town use that there is good support infrastructure for self-drive car users. For one, they can take the car to most parts of the country and wherever they are roadside assistance is mostly just a phone call away, and is supposed to arrive in a couple of hours at most. The cars, too, are well-maintained. The security deposit for the smaller vehicles is about Rs 6,000, which is a far more reasonable amount than the
Rs 20,000-plus that one would need to keep blocked as security deposit earlier.

There’s some flexibility now about where one can pick up and drop the vehicle. Typically it has to be at the same place, but Zoomcar now has a provision where one can pick up a vehicle in Calcutta and drop it in Siliguri. Also, those reaching Guwahati or Siliguri (Bagdogra) by flight, can now pick up self-drive cars too and go exploring the region. Also, those booking the car can also add co-drivers (with valid licence) using the Zoomcar app, available for Android and iOS.

And all of that is good news in the Durga Puja and holiday season for those in eastern India with a yen for taking to the road behind the steering of a set of wheels.