Owning a car is considered unnecessary in Singapore due to the nation’s efficient public transport and taxi systems. If nothing else, car ownership is considered a luxury due to high vehicle prices. With limited cars for sale, potential owners must also bid for a certificate of entitlement (COE), and prices for these have reached new highs in recent years.
GetGo, launched on Feb 25, 2021, by co-founders Toh Ting Feng and Johnson Lim, offers convenient car-sharing options for those needing easy access to a vehicle. Toh is also the company’s CEO, while Lim is the chief marketing officer (CMO).
In an interview with The Edge Singapore, Toh calls the company a “Covid-19 baby”. Transportation is one of the various challenges society faces. “Because of the pandemic, people were shifting away from public transportation. The government was discouraging people from going out. At the same time — when we go out — we observe that existing car-sharing players are doing relatively well,” says Toh.
Alongside the shift in people’s travel patterns, Toh’s family — which invested in Lion City Rentals catering to private hire drivers — faced a surge in returning cars amid the pandemic. Once owned by Uber, Lion City Rentals is now under a joint venture between Toh’s family’s investment portfolio and Lim’s family. “At that time, we saw an opportunity and a problem. So we put two and two together to start a business,” adds Toh.When choosing the company’s name, the co-founders aimed for something catchy that resonated with their mission and ethos of enabling mobility. “GetGo” was the chosen name from a shortlist.
Toh says the name is not just an alliteration of two action verbs, it also mirrors the simplicity of GetGo’s service — a platform that enables customers to get a car, explore and experience easily.
Vision of mobility
GetGo aimed to address the challenge of limited car ownership and accessibility for a significant portion of society. “Our vision of mobility is really one where most people can use public transport for 90% of their needs, but during that 10% of the time where their needs are not as well met by public transportation, they have options,” says Toh.
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The company sees a substantial market opportunity, with about 1.2 million Singaporean households not owning cars. Even among car owners, many underutilise their vehicles despite significant upfront costs. Toh adds: “Our goal is to enable everyone with the freedom to drive, but in a much more financially sustainable and efficient manner [where] you only pay for the car when you use it. And over time, what we want to do, of course, is to help reduce the need for owning the car yourself.”
Ensuring widespread accessibility, GetGo has set an ambitious goal of reaching 10,000 cars in its fleet by 2030. The company also aims to establish a presence in over 90% of the HDB car parks across the island.
In March, when interviewed by The Edge Singapore, Toh said that most GetGo users reside within a 300m radius, allowing them a convenient three- to five-minute walk to access a car. As of Nov 3, GetGo boasts a fleet of over 3,000 cars, spanning 50 models and stationed at more than 1,600 locations, steadily progressing towards its ambitious target of 10,000 cars by 2030.
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Most of all, GetGo makes car access hassle-free for users. Unlike competitors that require membership, the company asks users to download their app, link it to their Singpass account for licence verification, and allow a simple pay-as-you-go system.
“In terms of our user proposition, simplicity is one of them,” says Toh. “We don’t collect membership [fees] or deposits, we don’t have a credit wallet. So you don’t have to give us any money unless you will use the service.”
“We’ve also used Bluetooth technology to connect all the cars, meaning that once you download and register, you put in your credit card, if there’s a car next to you, you can start driving immediately. You don’t have to wait for a key card or something else,” he adds. They also offer the flexibility to book up to 30 days in advance — anytime — with their cars conveniently located islandwide.
Currently, GetGo does not own most of its cars directly. Instead, the company prefers collaborative partnerships with existing rental companies like Lion City Rentals and other key partners, including ComfortDelGro C52 (CDG), Grab and Komoco. GetGo acquires cars through long-term loans from partners, spanning six months to two years. Throughout this duration, the company manages maintenance and related responsibilities.
The cars selected by GetGo also have to be “commercially viable” because enough people have to pay to use the car, says Toh. The rent generated by GetGo’s users should, in turn, compensate whichever company that has provided the car. Luxury cars, for instance, will not be suitable as they are too expensive, and the company won’t be able to get enough people to use them to make up for the rent.
“We also don’t take a lot of commercial vehicles… we have a small number of commercial vans, but we don’t take lorries, motorcycles… we don’t take things we don’t think will be well-utilised by our user base,” he adds.
However, the high COE prices have deterred potential car owners and impacted GetGo’s vehicle sourcing from partners. As Toh explains: “If we buy all the cars ourselves, first of all, we’d need a lot of capital. Having partners also gives us more variety of cars and helps us diversify our supply base.”
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Toh: Our goal is to enable everyone with the freedom to drive, but in a much more financially sustainable and efficient manner [where] you only pay for the car when you use it / Photo: GetGo
Electric dreams
GetGo not only aims to make driving accessible but also plans to increase its current fleet’s electric vehicle share. The plan is to increase the number of EVs from slightly over 300 in November to around 400 by the year’s end, with a long-term target of reaching 10,000 electric or hybrid vehicles.
“What we’re doing to make car-sharing EVs a reality is investing in a lot of technology that allows our operations team and users to charge their cars seamlessly wherever they are. For example, if you book one of our cars and go to Great World City, we’ll make it easy for you to plug the car in and get it charged up when you’re having dinner,” says Toh.
“We will also charge the cars overnight. So we are also partnering with many charging point operators to co-locate our cars in the same car park where they have chargers. [In this instance], we don’t necessarily take up the lot, but we can place our cars within the same car park, so as and when our users return the cars, they can help us park in the car park and get it charged,” he adds. “That’s a little different from some of our friends where the car park lot has a charger. Our approach is more agile in a way, in that we invest in the technology and partnerships, as well as allow our users to help us.”
GetGo is among the first to share electrified mobility through its direct integrations with three of the nation’s largest charging point operators (CPOs): CDG Engie, Charge+ and ChargEco. According to GetGo, on Nov 3, the partnerships enabled the company’s EV users to access hundreds of charging stations islandwide through the GetGo app.
Primary focus
The company envisions establishing a global brand while expanding its presence in the republic. It has set its sights on entering other markets such as Taipei, Sydney, Seoul and Tokyo.
For the moment, GetGo is firmly established in Singapore. On Nov 3, it inaugurated GetGo City, a 14,000 sq ft facility at the one-north district in Ayer Rajah. This new space is designed to accommodate the expanding headcount, which is expected to double over the next few years.
Besides its existing partnerships, GetGo is forging ahead with strategic collaborations to propel the company forward. One significant alliance involves public transport operator SBS Transit, wherein GetGo will integrate its car-sharing platform with SBS Transit’s extensive public transportation network. To expedite the expansion of its electric fleet, GetGo secured $20 million in funding from family-backed investment group Treis in February of this year, supplementing its initial seed round in June 2020.
Despite having external investors eyeing an eventual exit, GetGo has no plans to go public. “Going public is a means to an end. It’s not a target in itself. You go public when you feel like you can raise capital from the right capital providers.
As at FY2022, GetGo has been profitable. That said, the team's primary focus is on expanding the scale of the business and maximising its impact in the initial years. Toh adds: “We want sustainable or profitable growth, which means that we’re not growing by burning through capital that we have raised.”
