MY STARTUP IDEA: Indians were ready to drive, didn't have wheels

In this column, we bring you the stories behind how startup founders got their business idea, and the things, events, and actions that eventually led them to their big eureka moment.
GREG MORAN, FOUNDER, ZOOMCAR
The idea: To build a self-drive car rental service in India
Eureka moment: For American native Greg Moran, it was a project in India that led the investment banker to first get familiar with the India space." I realized that India was a great opportunity and somebody had to do something very quickly about infrastructure. This was in 2010. The notion of transport came up because it was not that regulated and easier to break into. So we started thinking about what were the big models we could adopt to help with urban infrastructure," he says. Zoom, a self-drive service in a similar concept was operating in the US. He decided to build the same in India.
Initial days: I got lucky in the first week of December. A meeting with Ford in Delhi led me to a car dealer in Bengaluru, who in turn connected me with Ramesh Tours and Travels, a firm which would provide Zoomcar with the much coveted licence. On December 22, 2012, we inked the deal with Ramesh Tours and Travels.
Biggest challenge: Almost all the investors Moran spoke to initially hated the concept. "The investors saw this as a difficult business in terms of execution risk. What I heard the most was Indians hate driving. But it seemed unlikely because I saw people driving their own cars. I even spoke to dealers and young people, who gave me a different notion," he says.
Where it is now: Zoomcar is profitable in most of the cities, with more than 3,000 fleet size. The company recently introduced a cycle-sharing business in India.