Welcoming HitchaCar to our Portfolio
On behalf of Genesis, I’m excited to announce our investment in HitchaCar. HitchaCar is a peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace where travelers can list their cars for share when they’re out of town or rent someone else’s car when they’re visiting a city.
The Problem
Many people leave their cars idle at airports incurring parking fees while they travel. Then, when they arrive at their destination, they often have to rent a car which adds even more costs. To the HitchaCar team, this seemed like a glaring inefficiency that they hoped to address.
HitchaCar provides a marketplace for renting vehicles at airports. When a traveler is going on vacation, they can sign an agreement with HitchaCar to rent their vehicles to people travelling into the city for a specified number of days. People arriving to a city can quickly use the HitchaCar website to find a vehicle that matches their stay and desired features right at the airport for a price that is competitive with traditional car rental options.
The Founders
HitchaCar was founded by Aabid Ali, Arman Momin, and Ishaan Kurji. The founding team members are childhood friends who grew up together, attending the same school and playing on the same sports teams. On numerous occasions, the team members travelled together which helped them realize the market potential for HitchaCar as they left their car idle at the airport and paid money to rent a car from a rental car company at their destination.
Aabid Ali (Economics ’19) — Aabid serves as the CEO of HitchaCar. Before starting HitchaCar, he was a business development intern at Burpy. Aabid hopes to drive traction at HitchaCar to the point that he can dedicate himself to it full-time. For now, however, he has accepted a job offer at Oracle.
Arman Momin (Economics ’19) — Arman serves as the CTO and CMO of HitchaCar. As Chief Marketing Officer, Arman coordinates the company’s go to market strategy and customer acquisition plan. Outside of the venture, he was a software test engineer at Overseas Trading where he created software to improve invoicing and labeling tasks. Arman also hopes to devote himself to HitchaCar full-time but has accepted a full-time consulting role for now.
Ishaan Kurji (Economics ’19) — Ishaan serves as the COO of HitchaCar. He has internship experiences in sales and business analyst roles at Altria and Toro Imports, respectively. Like the others, he hopes to accelerate HitchaCar’s traction enough to dedicate himself to it full-time instead of the position he has currently accepted.
How’re They Doing?
HitchaCar has already completed 40 rides as a part of their live beta. The team plans to go live with the platform during early June and is excited for their first official users. Until you make it to the airport, you can keep up with HitchaCar on their brand new Instagram page @hitchacar.
Katherine Allen, Venture Partner, on why she led this deal with Analysts Mohit Gupta and Lucious McDaniel IV
The Hitchacar team’s tenacity is what struck me first. The team actually came to pitch Genesis twice. In their first pitch, they were in the early stages of their idea, and by the second pitch, they had launched a prototype they built, landed major meetings, and had prepared a fantastic plan for a pilot. Additionally, their “hustle” was immediately apparent. We have so many founders who walk through the door with “great ideas,” but when pressed about their ideas, we find that they’ve never actually had a conversation with their ideal user. The Hitchacar team, on the contrary, had driven over to the Austin and Houston airports, planted themselves at the entrance, and surveyed as many people as possible walking into the airport about their car parking habits. I’m excited to continue working with a team that understands that a great idea is not measured by the quality of a PowerPoint, but rather the cold hard truth of whether or not customers will pay and participate in the vision.
