<article>Thailand&#8217;s first car sharing platform Drivemate has secured six-digit seed funding from 500 TukTuks and DTAC Accelerate to speed up its business expansion.</article>

Thailand&#8217;s first car sharing platform Drivemate has secured six-digit seed funding from 500 TukTuks and DTAC Accelerate to speed up its business expansion.
The idea for Drivemate is similar to <a class="tinymce-colortext" style="color: #000080;" href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/?s=turo">Turo</a>, a San Francisco-based peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace, which closed a $92 million Series D round led by <a class="tinymce-colortext" style="color: #000080;" href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/?s=Daimler">Daimler</a> and Korean conglomerate <a class="tinymce-colortext" style="color: #000080;" href="https://www.dealstreetasia.com/?s=SK+Holdings">SK Holdings</a> last month.
Silratth Sukwatthanasiri, founder and chief executive officer of Drivemate, said that the startup has grown rapidly since its inception last year. More than 6,000 cars are now available on the platform, which operates in 35 provinces.
&#8220;From our survey, we found that [car] owners used their cars for average 5 hours a day, plus total value of car rental market in Thailand is as high as 30 billion baht. We, therefore, believe that we can attract and help car owners utilise their cars during the remaining 19 hours each day and grow such online platform domestically and regionally,&#8221; he said.
Drivemate claims it sees over 1,000 transactions per month and has generated around 1.5 million baht in monthly revenue from charging a 25 per cent commission fee from car owners and a fixed fee at 300 baht from renters. It aims for revenues to hit 20 million baht this year and surge to 50 million baht ($1.5 million) in 2018.
It will launch a mobile app next month as well as a new car rental service with a driver called Drivemate Trip. Later on, it plans to expand its business in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia and Malaysia likely to be next pit stops.
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Drivemate, the first carsharing platform in Thailand, has secured an undisclosed sum in seed round from 500 TukTuks and DTAC Accelerate.

Thai car sharing platform Drivemate gets seed funding from 500 Tuktuks, DTAC

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Thai car sharing platform Drivemate gets seed funding from 500 Tuktuks, DTAC

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