Sencar, a car rental service, was one of the startups leaving a strong impression in Episode 9 of the Shark Tank Vietnam TV Show Season 6 broadcast some days ago.

Sencar’s founder and CEO Nguyen Phuc Lam said he has six years of experience in car rental service development when he worked in Canada and he has successfully divested from the business.

After returning to Vietnam, Lam decided to develop startup Sencar together with another founder who has experience in building systems for Socar, a unicorn startup which IPOed in 2022.

According to the founder, Sencar is a digital transformation model used for self-driving cars. The app allows users to satisfy their dream of driving a car at a reasonable cost.

“It is very simple to rent a car. You just need to conduct three operations – seeking cars, booking cars and coming and unlocking cars via app,” he said.

The founder is optimistic about the prospects of the car rental market. He cited a report as saying that the Vietnamese car rental market would be worth $1 billion. Showing great potential, Lam called on Shark Tank’s investors to invest $300,000 in the startup, in exchange for 10 percent of Sencar shares.

Also according to Lam, in the last two years, Sencar has developed both hardware and software with just 1/10 of the cost of that of modern solutions in the world.

The major functions of Sencar include locking/unlocking cars via app and watching the dash camera. The app also has a security system which prevents thieves. Lam revealed that each car, equipped with these IoT systems, needs $110, or VND2.6 million.

Asked about the rental, Lam said the rent is VND200,000-400,000 for every two hours of use.

A small-size car priced at VND250-300 million can bring Sencar VND9-10 million a month, which means profit of 40 percent per annum. Sencar commits to bring profits of 20-25 percent for each car.

Sencar targets clients at the ages of 20-45 who have monthly income of VND15 million or more. They rent cars to travel 30-40 kilometers within the city or travel to neighboring cities.

Four out of five sharks in Shark Tank, including three Vietnamese and one Swedish, refused to invest in the startup, saying that demand in Vietnam is weak. Meanwhile, Shark Minh, chair of Beta cinema chain, offered investment capital of $300,000 for 45 percent of shares. However, he was rejected.

Trong Dat