Telgani: Partnering for profit in Saudi’s mobility sector

Telgani: Partnering for profit in Saudi’s mobility sector

In countries that lack a robust public transport infrastructure, car ownership and renting tend to dominate. Over the past couple of years, several mobility startups have emerged from car rental platforms to peer-to-peer car sharing. When the pandemic hit however, the industry suffered miserably. In 2019 in Saudi Arabia, the car rental market was valued at $996 million according to Statista, dropping to $483 million in 2020. 

For traditional car rental companies like Hertz, business dropped 70-80 per cent according to Raed Dodokh, Hertz Saudi Arabia's national fleet and operations manager. 

Many of the mobility startups adapted to the unprecedented situation by either reassessing the focus of their business, adding more services to cater to the changing customer preferences or simply leveraging their own tech stack in order to be able to venture into other sectors. 

As lockdown measures were lifted in the country, the initial shock of the pandemic started to tail off and demand for private vehicles has since increased, giving way to several turnaround opportunities for the hard-hit vehicle rental businesses.

Telgani, a Saudi Arabia-based car rental startup, managed to tackle the lockdown-led challenges by introducing new services, notably the addition of delivering the cars to its customers, which attracted the