UK peer to peer car rental company, RideLink, raises over £1m on Seedrs
by Startacus Admin
RideLink, a UK peer to peer car rental platform, also operating in Spain and Germany, has surpassed its £1 million crowdfunding target.
RideLink recently announced the launch of its first equity crowdfunding round, aiming to open to investors of all sizes who wanted to own part of the continued expansion of this disruptive car hire model. In the traditionally non-digital car rental industry, which has typically not been known for ease of use or customer service, there is great opportunity for innovation. Although RideLink has now surpassed it’s £1m target, it’s campaign currently remains open but is likely to close soon. RideLink views this equity round as a natural step in the evolution of the platform, allowing people who believe in the future of car sharing to not only be part of the community, but to also own part of it. Crowdfunding is part of RideLink’s commercial strategy to build and engage their community.
Last month Startacus (that's us) chatted to Founders Alexander Stevenson and Robert Bruce to find out more about RideLink and they highlighted that if successful in crowdfunding via Seedrs they would use the 
proceeds to continue to improve the RideLink platform and continue to grow and serve our community by:
"Develop new features, and make our platform better; we aim to continue to simplify and automate the rental experience, adding functionality to our mobile apps, and continuing to expand the abilities of our web platform."
And in terms of serving their community:
"Fund growth and customer acquisition. Since our offering for both renters and owners with scale, this growth will help us continue to offer a fantastic service for owners and renters alike."
As a platform that allows people to share their cars, RideLink offers communities access to these thousands of vehicles that are already conveniently located where people live and work. RideLink makes it possible for idle vehicles that are already available throughout our cities to meet the demand for rental vehicles, promoting access over ownership and bringing economic incentives to private car owners, without the environmental impacts of building and buying even more cars, just to rent.
By letting car owners share their vehicles, the traditional rental car market can be disrupted in a similar way to how hotel industry was disrupted by AirBnB, or how the traditional taxi model has been disrupted by Uber. 
RideLink, began operating in the UK in June 2015, has grown steadily, expanding into Spain and Germany. Adding up the amount of this equity round, RideLink has received over 5 million euros of investment. The crowdfunding round on Seedrs is the first time that the RideLink community and the public at large will have been able to buy shares of the company and RideLink plans to use the money to develop new features and fund continue growth and customer acquisition.
Congrats Alexander Stevenson and Robert Bruce and all the team at RideLink - we've watched your journey since we awarded you with our Startup of the Week award last year.
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Published on: 31st May 2017
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