Zoomcar, an India-based car sharing marketplace, announced Wednesday that it will be launching its operations in Vietnam.

The company, which dominates the self-drive car rental market in India, has expanded to Southeast Asia and appointed Kiet Pham as country head in Vietnam to help scale its business, Zoomcar said in a statement.

This broader geographic expansion is in line with Zoomcar’s ultimate mission to democratize car access across the world’s largest, most populated, and fastest-growing emerging markets, it said.

“At Zoomcar, we have always been focused on personal mobility, and with our recent entry into the Philippines and Egypt, we are happy to announce our foray into other Southeast Asia markets,

“We are thrilled to welcome Kiet as our new country head in Vietnam and look forward to benefiting from his experience of scaling up aggressively and building synergistic partnerships contributing to our growth,” said Sreejith Hrishikesh, Head International Operations, Zoomcar.

Headquartered in Bangalore, India, Zoomcar is India’s largest car-sharing platform. It has raised more than $290 million in funding throughout several rounds so far to drive its global expansion, including across Southeast Asia. The company now has approximately 10,000 cars on its platform.

Zoomcar recently announced that it successfully completed a $92 million private placement led by New York City-based SternAegis Ventures, with participation from leading international family offices and institutional investors.

Zoomcar said it intends to use the proceeds from this financing to grow its car-sharing marketplace in India and various select markets across Asia and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

It also said the company will continue to invest in its advanced engineering and data science platform, enabling it to strengthen its market leadership in global car sharing.

The company expects to increase investments across the internet of things (IoT), machine learning, and computer vision-related applications to further transform its user experience.

It also expects to significantly strengthen its enterprise software offerings to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and insurance companies.

“I am very excited to be joining Zoomcar at this important stage of its growth. I have always been passionate about helping to build companies that have a positive and long-term societal impact. I look forward to establishing Zoomcar in Vietnam and working closely with the Zoomcar team to further enhance the brand’s market trajectory with my contributions,” said Kiet.

As Vice President and Country Head, Kiet will lead Zoomcar’s operations in Vietnam. Kiet previously held senior management positions in companies like GOJEK, OYO, and Nielsen.

Kiet strongly believes in innovation as a vehicle for sustainability and is committed to making positive impacts on communities and organizations he is a part of. He also brings in over a decade of experience and his expertise in start-up management will prove vital in establishing Zoomcar as the first-to-market car-sharing platform in Vietnam.

Zoomcar launched India’s first car-sharing platform in 2013. It allows individuals to rent from a diverse pool of cars by the hour or by the day. The company employs over 300 people and operates in over 50 cities.

In 2020, Zoomcar launched Zoomcar Mobility Services, the company’s enterprise software as a service (SaaS)-based mobility solutions offering to cover white-label subscription services and IoT-based driver behavior monitoring solutions. Uri Levine, Co-Founder of mobility unicorns Waze and Moovit serves as the company’s Chairman of the Board.

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